
Ciass_ 

Book 



a 



INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 



INSTINCT 
AND EXPERIENCE 



BY 

G. LLOYD MORGAN 

D.Sc, LL.D., F.R.S. 

PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL 



NEW YORK 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1912 



■*** 

& ^ 



PREFACE 

IN the summer of 1910 a symposium on the subject of 
Instinct and Intelligence was held in London at a 
joint meeting of the Aristotelian and British Psycho- 
logical Societies and of the Mind Association. Con- 
siderable interest in the discussion was shown both in 
the room in which we met and beyond its walls. The 
papers then taken as read, and subsequently published 
in the " British Journal of Psychology," disclose not a 
little divergence in the sense in which the terms instinc- 
tive and intelligent are used, an underlying diver- 
gence in the principles on which the proffered 
interpretations are based, and indications, more or less 
clear, of yet deeper-seated differences of philosophical 
foundation. 

The questions at issue seem to open out live 
problems, and problems of wide range. Being under 
promise to write a short work on some aspect of 
genetic psychology I thought I might do some service 
by expanding my own contribution to the sym- 
posium, by bringing it into relation with the views 
expressed by other contributors, by following up the 
subject in further detail, and especially by giving 
something like definite form to the doctrine of ex- 
perience, which has, of late years, been taking shape 
in my mind, under influences too numerous to admit 
of detailed citation. 



vi INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

The burden of my contention is that the history of 
the universe, so far as we are able to read it, is one 
continuous story, every episode in which is, if one may 
so phrase it, logically correlated with other relevant 
episodes. I use the word logically in a broad sense 
as equivalent to intelligibly, with no finalistic implica- 
tion. For reasons which I hope to render clear I 
avoid the terms mechanical or mechanistic, since there 
is much in the world-story which, though it should be 
interpreted as logically or intelligibly determinate, 
involves natural relationships with which neither 
mechanics nor mechanism, as such, has any concern. 
The world-story, then, is intelligible and, in that sense, 
has a logic which we may endeavour to understand. 
But the story is only given up to date ; we can only 
found our interpretation on the part that has so far 
been told ; of its further and future development we 
can only make forecasts in so far as we can, in some 
measure, sympathetically identify our own finite and 
imperfect logic of interpretation with the fuller and 
more perfect logic of the story we attempt to read, a 
world-story within which our own life and thought is 
itself a correlated episode forming part of the story 
as a whole. Often our powers of prevision are balked. 
It is true that where we are dealing with repetitive 
routine, little more is required than a skilled applica- 
tion of our powers of calculation. But in the evolution 
which supersedes routine we have again and again to 
confess that we cannot foretell how the world-story 
will work out in the future. This however, I contend, 
is not because the inherent development of the story 
will be lacking in logical coherence ; it is because our 
imperfect insight and reason fail to grasp the 



PREFACE vii 

determining factors within the deeper logic of the 
universe. This deeper logic is what I have elected 
to term the ground of the world, both as that which 
is experienced or experienceable, and as the process 
of experiencing. This is the basis of the uniformity 
of nature, if by this we mean, not merely repetition 
da capo of the tune of the past in recurrent routine, 
but that progressive and unitary development of a 
harmonious theme, which is true evolution. In 
claiming for the universe an inner relevance — a unity 
of concatenation of correlated episodes — I am not, how- 
ever, concerned to contend that, for our finite 
understanding, there is nowhere and at no time 
discoverable irrelevance. World-processes in their 
detail seem often to have a way of running into blind 
alleys which are off the line of evolutionary progress ; 
but even along the main lines of progress since, so far 
as we can judge, the elimination of irrelevance is a 
condition of advance in human logic, it may well be 
that what we call evolution is of the same type. At 
any rate the development of the world, and of life on 
its surface, tends consistently to increasing relevance 
and more closely knit coherence in logical texture. 
As differentiation and integration proceed the growing 
complexity involves a type of structure which answers 
more and more closely to what in our thought is 
characteristically logical, apparent irrelevance being 
caught up into a richer relevance within a progressive 
whole. 

Within this developing whole with which experi- 
ence deals that experience has itself been developed. 
This involves the presence of those special relation- 
ships which are characterized by conscious awareness. 



viii INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

How shall we deal with them ? There they are as 
a matter of fact ; that no one can deny. They 
eventually have all the richness and complexity which 
are abundantly illustrated in human life ; that must 
be realized to the full. But how are they to be 
interpreted ? As part of the world-story, the highest 
outcome of its logic developed ah intra ? Or as 
alien insertions ab extra> derived from a logic of 
wholly different source ? I advocate the acceptance 
of the former alternative. 

But what does this imply? It implies that the 
fully explicit logic of human reason is but a higher 
development of the scarcely explicit logic of perceptual 
intelligence ; and that this in turn has its roots deeply 
embedded in the implicit logic of instinct which, as I 
define it, is organic behaviour suffused with awareness. 

Now granted that we have here genuine evolution 
as contrasted with the routine repetition which it 
supersedes, it appears to me that the key-note of the 
successive steps of progress is that (if I may pursue 
the logical analogy) there is always more in the 
conclusion than was contained in the premises. That 
is what I understand by the progressive synthesis 
which is characteristic of an evolving universe which 
we can interpret in rational fashion. It emphasizes, 
for example, the fact that in natural selection we have 
not only the elimination of failure ; we have also the 
synthetic production of success. But I contend that 
the grounds of the conclusion are always within the 
logical system of nature, and are not imposed on that 
system ab extra. That is where I part company with 
Dr. Driesch's Entelechy, M. Bergson's Vital Impetus, 
and the Psychic Entity of Mr. McDougall's Animism. 



PREFACE ix 

And if (carrying things yet one stage further back) 
conscious experience in the individual organism, as a 
concrete universal containing its share of the ground 
of the universe, appears to involve a conclusion 
carrying more than was present in the merely organic 
premises of embryological development — that, I urge, 
is just a fact of world-synthesis to be accepted — that, 
I claim, is of the same order as the facts which are 
characteristic of evolution throughout its entire range. 
If then we ask why this fact should be what it is and 
as it is, we must surely generalize the question, and 
ask why evolution should have those characteristics 
which, by patient research, we find that it does 
possess ; to which question, as I understand the matter, 
we can give no answer unless we resort to what I 
have termed the metaphysics of Source. 

Such being in outline my personal orientation 
towards the intra-mundane philosophy of experience, I 
have attempted to lead up to a discussion of some of 
the problems it opens out through a consideration 
of the nature of instinctive behaviour and its accom- 
panying instinctive experience. 

C. LLOYD MORGAN 

University of Bristol 
May, 1 91 2 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 

The Biological Approach — The Problem of the Source of the 
Natural Order excluded from Science — The Moorhen's Dive 
as an Example of Instinctive Behaviour — Biological Defini- 
tion of Instinctive Behaviour — Diving differentiated from 
Swimming and affords Specific Experience — Dependent on 
Racial Preparation under Biological Evolution — Conscious- 
ness at the outset a mere Spectator — Primary and Secondary 
Meaning — Physiological Sketch of Reflexes concerned in 
Instinctive Behaviour — Those involving only lower Brain- 
centres, distinguished from those involving the Cortex— 
Further Interpretation of Moorhen's Dive — The Earlier 
Stage of Instinctive Swimming — Are the Movements really 
such as to afford New Data to Experience ? — Dr. Myers' 
Contention that a completely New Movement is impossible — 
Its Logical Results — The Beginning of Experience when the 
Moorhen is hatched — Previous Experience in the Eggshell 
may be regarded as practically negligible — The Primary 
Genesis of Experience in Instinctive Performance — Difficult 
Philosophical Questions with regard to the Conscious 
Accompaniments — Broadened Connotation of term Instinc- 
tive — Dr. Driesch's definition of Instinct — Dr. Myers' 
Criticism thereof — Instinctive Performance practically 
serviceable — Serviceable to what Ends ? — The Guidance of 
Experience introduces Conditions other than those of 
Instinctive Performance 



xii INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

CHAPTER II 

THE RELATION OF INSTINCT TO EXPERIENCE 

PAGE 

Instinctive Behaviour an Organic Heritage — The Experience 
gained a Condition of Modified Behaviour — Dr. Myers' 
Identification of Instinct-intelligence — Its Consideration 
postponed — Some questions of Terminology — Cortical 
Influence on Lower Brain-centres correlated with Intelligent 
Modification of Behaviour — Dr. Stout's Criticism — When 
does Learning by Experience occur? — What are its Character- 
istics? — Divergence of View — The First and the Second 
Occasion — The Potential Experiencer — Pre-perception in 
Instinctive Performance — Mr. McDougall's and Dr. Stout's 
Doctrine of Inherited Pre-perception — Philosophical 
Implications postponed — The Nature of Pre-perceptual 
Meaning — Is its presence necessary for the Interpretation 
of Instinctive Behaviour— If present, due to Inherited 
Dispositions within the Cortex — Excluded, therefore, from 
Instinctive Behaviour as such — If included, Instinctive 
Behaviour is incipiently voluntary, as in Mr. McDougall's 
and Dr. Archdall Reid's Definitions of Instinct— As a form 
of Cortical Spread dim Pre-perception may be accepted as 
nowise contradictory to the Thesis of this Book— But, as 
Dr. Stout admits, it is relatively indeterminate— Definiteness 
the outcome of instinctive Pre-adjustment— Dr. Stout's 
contention that Intelligence must be present at the Outset 
of Experience— Process and Product of Experience — Intelli- 
gence as Process is what Dr. Stout rightly emphasizes— Some 
measure of agreement notwithstanding some divergence — 
Instinctive Endowment and Congenital Capacity for learning 
—Cortical Processes as correlated with Experience condition 
the Modifications of the Sub-cortical Processes primarily 
concerned in Instinctive Behaviour 28 



CHAPTER III 

REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 

Recapitulation of Position— The Identification of Instinctive 
Behaviour with Complex and Compound Reflex Action— 



CONTENTS xiii 



Instinctive Experience correlated with cortical changes 
conditioned by Instinctive Procedure — Instinctive Experience 
an Abstract Conception referring to certain Factors of 
Experience as contradistinguished from the Intelligent 
Factors — Prof. Sherrington's Researches on Reflex Action — 
First and Second Grades of Co-ordination — Chief Points of 
Emphasis — Scratch-reflex of the Dog — The Spinal Animal 
— Summation of Allied Stimuli — Antagonistic Reflexes — 
The Common Final Path — In Competition for Use of Final 
Common Path one Reflex generally prevails — Bearing of this 
on Instinctive Phenomena — Alternation of Reflexes — Spinal 
Irradiation and Induction— Further Effective Co-ordination — 
Influence of Fatigue — Scale of Potency — Nocuous Stimuli 
generally pre-potent — Constellations of Stimuli give purpo- 
sive results — The Decerebrate Animal — Activities of Decere- 
brate Frog ; of the Decerebrate Pigeon ; of the Decerebrate 
Dog — Observations of Goltz and Prof. Sherrington — Expres- 
sions of Emotion— Does the Decerebrate Animal behave 
instinctively ? — Assumed Conditions of Experience excluded 
with Removal of Cortex — How is Cortical Control operative? 
Principles of Integration probably the same throughout 
Central Nervous System— Dr. Paulow on Transference of 
sufticient Stimulus — Afferent Inlets and Instinctive Behaviour 54 



CHAPTER IV 

HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS AND INNATE MENTAL 
TENDENCIES 

"he Biological Origin of Instinctive Behaviour and its Relation 
to Consciousness — Is Consciousness as old as or later than 
Organic Life? — Our Provisional Hypothesis — The Con- 
genital and the Acquired ; their Relations to Heredity — 
Should Inherited Mental Capacity in definite direction be 
termed Instinctive? — Rational and Intellectual Instincts of 
some Authors — Higher Innate Tendencies regarded as 
Instinctive — Instinct of Mozart, Pascal, Bidder — Suggested 
Differentiation of Terms Innate and Instinctive — Cortical 
and Sub-cortical Dispositions — Secondary Meaning and 
Inherited Re-presentations — Pre-percepti ve Interest and Corti- 
cal Spread— Mr. McDougall's Doctrine of Instinct—General 



riv INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 



and Specific (Instinctive) Tendencies — Animistic View 
involving Teleological Interpretation — Mr. McDougall's 
" Principal Instincts of Man" — The Relation of Instinct to 
Emotion— Classes of Instinctive Modes of Behaviour and 
Experience — Predicates of Inherited Constitution as Logical 
Subject — Instincts as Unitary Principles — Disposition and 
Constitution — Danger of regarding Instincts as Faculties- 
Pugnacity as a Concept, and as a Principle or Force — The 
Nature of Impulse — The role of the Innate Mental Tendencies 
— How they run parallel with Instinctive Tendencies 
— Mr. McDougall's Treatment of the Complex Emotions — 
Compounds of Elements or Predicates of a Logical Subject? 
Emotion as a Mode of Experiencing — The Unity of 
experiencing, and the Multiplicity of Items experienced . 87 

CHAPTER V 

THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 

The Double Reference of Experience — The Experienced and 
Experiencing — The Subject as "owning" Experience — 
Existence of Nature as experienceable postulated — Instinctive 
Experience simplest and naivest form of Experience — Involves 
Conscious Relationships, and thus distinguished from Organic 
Process — The "ed" Reference and the "ing" Reference 
scarcely differentiated — Conscious Relationships constitutive 
of World-process and really count — The Limits of the 
Mental — Are Concepts mental or non-mental? — Policy of 
Interpretation outlined— Concept of Source or Agency ex- 
cluded from Science — Natural Processes correlated — The 
Conditions of Process — Are there Conditions of World- 
process as a whole?— The Concept of Ground — Constitu- 
tion of Nature as Ultimate Ground for Science — Example 
from Crystallization — Process and Product — Pluralistic 
Products and Monistic View of Process— One World-story— 
Unity of Concatenation — Perceptual Facts and Universal 
Concepts — Ideal Constructions as Maps — True so far as 
useful— Limits of Scientific Prediction— The Beginnings of 
Crystallization— Could Nature and Properties of Protoplasm 
be foretold ? — Mechanism and Vitalism as Descriptive Terms 
—Vital Force and Vital Chemistry— The Concept of En- 
telechy— Entelechy as Ground and as Source— Is there one 



CONTENTS xv 



PAGE 



Science of Nature ?— Organisms as Historical Beings- 
Constitution of Nature the Ground of their History — If New 
Departures frequent in Inorganic World, why not, on the 
same terms, in the Organic? .126 



CHAPTER VI 

NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 

[s there a Natural History of Experience ? — Self-consciousness as 
terminus ad quern and as terminus a quo — The Relation 
of History to Science — General Rules only emerge when 
History repeats itself— The Ground of the Expectations 
involved — Routine as the Basis of Science — Within what 
Limits does History repeat itself? — In what Sense is Evolu- 
tion the Appearance of the New? — The New as only a 
Re-grouping of the Old — The Characteristics of Routine — 
Organic Routine and Organic Evolution — Routine and Not- 
Routine in Experience — The Concept of the Individual — 
Does Heredity "provide" for both Routine and Evolution? 
— M. Bergson's Doctrine of Heredity and the Vital Impetus 
— A Contribution to Metaphysics rather than to Science — 
M, Bergson and Darwin — M. Bergson's Stress on the 
Continuity of Process — His Doctrine of Intellectual Snap- 
shots — All Process of the Vital and Conscious Order — Steps 
of the Argument — The Antithetical Views of Philosophical 
Materialists — The Search for Reality — Relationship and its 
Terms — The Conscious Relationship really counts — Relation- 
ships in Transverse Section — The Snap-shot "now" of 
Experience — A Specialized and Selective Relationship — 
Analogies throughout the Natural Order — Instinctive 
Experience as a Sequence of "nows"; conditioned by 
Primary Meaning — Secondary Meaning involves Factors 
of Revival — The Importance of Context — Longitudinal 
Relationships — Pre-perception and Memory — The Relation- 
ships extended in Ideal Construction — Map of Space and 
Time — M. Bergson's Doctrine of Time and Memory — The 
Distinction between the "eds" and the " ing" of Experience, 
as the Basis of much of M. Bergson's Philosophy — Can we 
make the "ing" an "ed"? 163 



xvi INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

CHAPTER VII 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 

PAG] 

Sydney Smith on the Contrast between Instinct and Reason — 
M. Bergson's Doctrine of Instinct and Intelligence as 
Different Forms of Knowledge— The Relation of Instinct 
to Consciousness — Consciousness as Annulled — Relation to 
old Physiological "Views on Automatism — The Insinuation 
of Life as Pure Memory — The Brain as a Switchboard, not 
in any sense a Storehouse of Memories — Pure Memory as 
Spirit directs the Physiological Impulses in the Nervous 
System by the insertion of Choice — What we enjoy as 
Consciousness is the Glow of Unconscious Spirit traversing 
Unconscious Brain-matter — Instinct and Organization — Their 
Relation to Pure Memory — M. Bergson's View of the 
Relation of Instinct to Intelligence— Divergent Paths in 
Arthropods and Vertebrates as Choice of Vital Impetus — 
Must attempt to deal with M. Bergson's Views sympathetic- 
ally — Is the Absence of Learning a Criterion of Instinct ? — 
Both Instinct and Intelligence involve Innate Knowledge; 
the one of Things and Matter, the other of Relation and 
Form— Seeking and finding through Instinct and Intelligence 
— The Nature of Instinctive Knowledge in the Insect — 
Instinct as Sympathy, but the Interpretation not Scientific — 
M. Bergson's Aim avowedly Philosophical — His Appeal to 
Experience as experienczV^— Instinct, Intuition, and Sym- 
pathy— Intuition, Invention, and Application— The Kernel 
of M. Bergson's Doctrine of Instinct — Relation of the 
Doctrine to that here advocated — In all Experience the 
"ing" and the "eds" correlative; but with Variations of 
Emphasis — The Detachment of Intellectual Interpretation 

— M. Bergson's Method of Hypostatising the Results 
of Analysis — The Home of Motion and Duration — 
How do we get at Movement and Process outside us— 
The r61e of Sympathy and of Empathy— M. Bergson's 
Stress on the Inward Direction of Instinct and Sym- 
pathy towards Process— Dr. Myers reverses the Direction 

— His Views on the Relation of Instinct and Intelli- 
gence 204 



CONTENTS xvii 

CHAPTER VIII 

FINALISM AND MECHANISM : BODY AND MIND 

PAGB 

Finalism and Correlated Routine— Organic Tunes played da capo 
— Entelechy and Variations or Mutations — Finalism in 
Human Life as Purposeful — Similar Ends reached through 
Different Means—Stability of Constitution — The Sense in 
which the Present is conditioned by the Future — Universal 
Finalism — Mechanism the Antithesis to Finalism — Technical 
Details of a Mechanical Ideal Construction — Mechanistic 
Interpretation in Terms of Physics and Chemistry— Organic 
Phenomena need a further Formula — Psychological Relation- 
ships correlated but not identical with Physiological — Need 
we introduce Source ? — Ambiguities to be avoided — Mechan- 
istic Philosophy and Universal Correlation — Conscious 
Relationships as Pre-perceptive really count — One Natural 
Order or two ? — Is Inter-action inconceivable ? — Where lies 
the Mystery ? — The Doctrine of Parallelism — What is to be 
expected from the Appeal to Physiology ? — The Contention 
that Different Psychical States may be correlated with the 
same Cerebral States — Parallelism in Terms of the "ing" 
and the "eds" of experience — Not two Processes, but one, 
in merging Unity with Different Relationships — Dr. Driesch's 
" Intra-psychical Series " — Has nothing to do with the Brain 
— Mr. McDougall's Argument from "Meaning" — No 
Unitary Neural Process correlated with Meaning — His Thesis 
in Terms of "ing" and "eds" — His Psychic Entity an 
Hypostatized Abstraction — Our Interpretation of the Facts 
of Meaning — Organic Total Reaction — Retinal Rivalry — 
Divergent Interpretations of Biological Facts — Return to 
Finalism and Mechanism — The Doctrine of Panpsychism — 
Is all Process Conscious or Quasi-conscious? — The Emphasis 
on Pre-perception — In any case Nature the Product of 
Unitary Process 241 

Index 293 



INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 



CHAPTER I 

INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOUR AND 
EXPERIENCE 

I PROPOSE to approach the problems of experi- 
ence through the avenue of biology. My aim 
is to treat the phenomena of conscious existence as 
a naturalist treats the phenomena of organic life. I 
shall therefore begin with instinctive behaviour and 
shall endeavour to give some account of the nature 
of the instinctive experience which, as I believe, 
accompanies it. In this way we shall get some idea 
of what I conceive to be the beginnings of experience 
in the individual organism. 

A consideration of the criticisms to which such a 
method of treatment, and its results, have been 
subjected will lead to some qualification of the 
hypothesis at first barely outlined, and will open up 
further problems with regard to the nature and 
development of experience. We shall find as we 
proceed that the term instinctive is used by different 
writers with rather wide divergence of meaning. It 
will become evident that men of weight, like 
Dr. Titchener and Dr. Thorndike in America, 



2 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

M. Bergson in France, Dr. Driesch and Father 
Wasmann in Germany, Dr. Stout, Mr. McDougall, 
and Dr. C. S. Myers in England, employ the term 
with differing connotation and denotation. Minor 
differences are found among writers whose approach 
like my own is from the side of biology. Under 
these circumstances some attempt to correlate 
divergent opinions should be helpful to further 
progress. Such an attempt might be made by one 
who, having no particular view of his own to support, 
could undertake the task with wholly unprejudiced 
judgment. That in my case is impossible. I have 
already reached conclusions of my own. If, however, 
I can succeed in giving a fair and just account of the 
teaching of those from whom I differ, and can make 
clear the grounds of my dissent, the fact that I write 
as an advocate, rather than one who is fitted to be 
judge and arbiter, may perhaps conduce to that 
vitality of treatment which is one of the advantages 
of a conflict of views. 

But as we follow up the relation of instinct to 
other modes and phases of the life of experience we 
shall find that wider and wider issues are brought 
into the field of our consideration. It is part of my 
aim to deal with these in the spirit of one who has 
not only an interpretation of instinct to formulate, but 
also a more comprehensive scientific doctrine to 
advocate — a doctrine of the relation of experience to 
the world as experienceable. For the further we go 
the more clearly shall we see that a thinker's con- 
clusions with regard to the nature of instinct are 
intimately connected with his philosophical attitude 
towards large and far-reaching world-problems. I 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 3 

propose to discuss these problems from the point of 
view of one who comes to them from the scientific 
side, so far as the space at my command permits, and 
so far as such discussion is calculated to throw light 
on the nature and development of experience. 

Under the stimulating influence of M. Bergson 
the more philosophical aspect of life-problems has 
recently come into special prominence. Through his 
powerful advocacy, through the teaching of Dr. 
Driesch, and more recently through the skilfully 
marshalled arguments of Mr. McDougall — to mention 
no other names — the pendulum of opinion has 
acquired new impetus in the vitalistic direction of its 
swing. My own position will, I trust, be made suffi- 
ciently clear in the sequel. I shall urge that there is a 
tendency to introduce into a scientific discussion of 
such problems concepts which I regard as non- 
scientific. 

The aim of science, I conceive, is to develop a 
generalized interpretation of natural processes in all 
their relationships, including the conscious relation- 
ships which go to the synthetic formation of 
experience. Science does not, however, attempt to 
give any answer — not even the hint of an answer — to 
the further question : — What is the Source of the 
natural processes so interpreted? That I conceive 
to be a metaphysical question. It opens up issues 
which are intimately connected with Theology and 
with Religion. With such metaphysical problems I 
do not attempt to deal in this book. Without for 
one moment denying their vital human interest and 
their supreme importance, I wish at the outset to 
exclude them altogether from any place in a scientific 



4 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

interpretation of natural processes. My only concern 
with them will be an emphatic, and perhaps often 
repeated, denial of their right of entry into a scientific 
universe of discourse, as I define the term scientific. 
It may, of course, be said that, by doing this, one 
leaves the scheme of science quite unexplained. Not 
only the mode of origin of the world in which we 
live, but its final end and purpose are thus wholly dis- 
regarded. Exactly so ! These are just the questions 
which should be left over for metaphysical treatment. 
Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, mineralogy — 
all the sciences which deal with the inorganic world — 
have long ago recognized this. Some day biology and 
psychology will do so with equal candour and to their 
lasting profit. 

Some years ago 1 I had under observation two 
young moorhens or waterhens which I had hatched in 
an incubator and watched from day to day, almost 
from hour to hour, with some care. One of these, 
about nine weeks old, was swimming in a pool at the 
bend of a stream in Yorkshire. A vigorous rough- 
haired puppy, highly charged with canine vitality, ran 
down from the neighbouring farm, barking and 
gambolling ; and from the bank he made an awkward 
feint towards the young bird. In a moment the 
moorhen dived, disappeared from view, and soon 
partially reappeared, his head just peeping above the 
water beneath the overhanging bank. Now this was 
the first time the bird had dived. I had repeatedly 

1 Cf. " Habit and Instinct," p. 64. " British Journal of Psychology," 
vol. iii., pp. 11 and 221. Some passages which have appeared in papers 
contributed to this Journal are here utilized. 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 5 

endeavoured to elicit this characteristic piece of 
behaviour, but had failed. My friend Mr. F. A. 
Knight tells me that he has seen a moor-chick, not 
more than a day old, dive under a log of wood when 
suddenly disturbed. I have seen them dive nearly as 
early in life. Under unnatural conditions, however, 
in a large bath, and under natural conditions in the 
Yorkshire stream, do what I would in my efforts to 
coax or to frighten the young bird, I had never been 
able to make him dive. But now at last that 
blundering puppy succeeded, where I had so often 
failed. And when this characteristic piece of 
behaviour came upon my little friend — came upon 
him suddenly and without warning — his dive was 
absolutely true to type. 

I have elsewhere * advocated the acceptance of a 
definition of instinctive behaviour as that which is, on 
its first occurrence, independent of prior experience ; 
which tends to the well-being of the individual and 
the preservation of the race ; which is similarly per- 
formed by all the members of the same more or less 
restricted group of animals ; and which may be 
subject to subsequent modification under the guid- 
ance of experience. Such behaviour is, I conceive, a 
more or less complex organic or biological response to 
a more or less complex group of stimuli of external 
and internal origin, and it is, as such, wholly 
dependent on how the organism, and especially the 
nervous system and brain-centres have been built 
through heredity, under that mode of racial pre- 
paration which we call biological evolution. 

How far does the behaviour of the moorhen* 

1 '* Animal Behaviour, " p. 71. 



6 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

when it dives for the first time in its life, conform 
to this definition? I conceive that it conforms all 
along the line so long as, but only so long as, we 
restrict our attention to its specific nature as dive. 
Qua dive, it is independent of prior diving experience, 
for there has been no such experience. Of course it 
may be said that diving involves swimming and that 
of swimming the moorhen has had abundant 
experience during two months of active life. That 
is surely true enough. But to dive is not only to 
swim, but to swim with a difference. It is adapted 
to the peculiar circumstances of complete immersion. 
I do not think that any careful observer will deny 
that diving is a differentiated form of swimming and 
that it has specific characters which make it some- 
thing other than merely swimming under water. 
The whole poise and set of the body, the position 
of the head and outstretched neck, the impelling 
strokes of the legs, are specially adapted to a 
relatively new mode of progression. There must be 
a correlated modification of the processes of respira- 
tion. The question is whether these and other 
specific differentiations of behaviour are instinctive 
in the sense that they are as such independent of 
prior experience. That they are wholly independent 
of all previous experience I do not assert. If that 
were the case it is difficult to understand how they 
could possibly be incorporated with, and synthetically 
assimilated to, the experience already gained. But 
that they provide new factors to be so incorporated 
and assimilated seems to me to be a conclusion 
forced upon us by the facts of the case. The 
particular and specific form of behaviour exhibited 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 7 

by the moorhen on the occasion of its first dive is, I 
believe, dependent as such on how the nervous 
system has been built up under that mode of racial 
preparation which we call biological evolution. If 
in further criticism of the view I wish to make clear, 
it be urged that though perhaps the specific form of 
the scare-begotten dive-situation is due to the 
hereditary make-up of the nerve-centres, it is also 
partly dependent (e.g. in its relation to swimming) 
on how the nerve-centres have been moulded and 
modified under previous experience — that is to say 
in psychological terms, partly dependent on 
intelligent guidance — I venture to remind my critic 
that we are endeavouring to disentangle the factors 
of behaviour ; that all I urge is that an instinctive 
factor, new to experience, is introduced. I am ready 
to admit, nay more I am prepared to contend, that, 
just in so far as the behaviour is dependent on previous 
experience, we have also the presence of the intelligent 
factor. In a moorhen two months old instinct and 
intelligence co-operate. None the less the instinctive 
and intelligent factors are distinguishable in analysis. 
What are we to understand by intelligent 
guidance ? At a later stage of our enquiry I shall 
endeavour to defend the hypotheses that intelligent 
guidance is the function of the cerebral cortex with 
its distinguishing property of consciousness ; that the 
co-ordination involved in instinctive behaviour, and 
in the distribution of physiological impulses to the 
viscera and vascular system, is the primary function 
of the lower brain-centres ; that, in instinctive 
behaviour as such, consciousness correlated with 
processes in the cerebral cortex, is so to speak, a 



n INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

mere spectator of organic and biological occurrences 
at present beyond its control ; but that, as spectator, 
it receives information of these occurrences through 
the nerve-channels of connexion between the lower 
and the higher parts of the brain. This, however, is 
only an outline sketch of a programme for further 
discussion. At present we are only concerned with 
this question : What gives to experience its guiding 
value ? Dr. Stout has enabled us to give the answer 
in one word. Experience has guiding value in virtue 
of the meaning it embodies. Why does the burnt 
'-hild shun fire? Because the sight of fire has 
. leaning. Why does the chick that has but once or 
I a ice taken a ladybird into its bill no longer peck at 
these insects notwithstanding its instinctive tendency 
to peck at any small object within reach ? Because 
the appearance of the ladybird carries meaning. 
Why does your dog beg when you say " biscuit " ? 
Because the sound has meaning. One is obliged, in 
order to avoid pedantry, to say that the sight or 
sound or other presentation to sense carries or 
conveys or has meaning. It would be more correct 
to say that the total experience in any one of these 
situations is meaningful. Any given experience in 
any given moment is a synthetic product or, from a 
different point of view, a phase in a continuous 
synthetic process. It is essential to bear in mind 
that, no matter how far and in what detail we may 
analyse such a synthetic phase of na'fvely developing 
experience into its constituents, within the experience 
as given and felt, or as Professor Alexander would 
say enjoyed, these constituents merge their individu- 
ality to form an indissoluble whole. 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 9 

We may here distinguish between primary and 
secondary meaning. 1 Suppose there be a bit of 
developing experience occurring as such for the first 
time — our moorhen's dive for example — which gives 
a sequence a, b, c, d. Since the consciousness of the 
first part of the sequence has not faded away when 
the latter part comes, the experience at the phase d 
is not one of d only but of d as qualified by the net 
results of the precedent a, b, c. This qualification of 
d by what has gone before is the primary meaning 
which d " carries M ; it is that which makes d mean- 
ingful through primary retention. There is here no 
revival of what has faded out of consciousness and 
has to be reinstated. Thus primary experience — 
that of the dive to wit — swells with meaning as it 
grows, as it develops, as it proceeds on its course. 
But now suppose the completed series a f b, c, d } e, /, 
has been previously experienced ; then on a 
subsequent occasion when d is reached it is not only 
qualified by the precedent a, b, c, of this occasion, 
but also by a revival or pre-perception of the e> f> 
which formed part of the series on a previous 
occasion. This pre-perception, this expectation be- 
gotten of previous experience, is the secondary 
meaning which d then carries. Behaviour in part 
determined by secondary meaning I term intelligent. 
If the situation within which the sound "biscuit," 
in its appropriate setting, occurs had not developed 
on former occasions in a certain routine, your dog 
would have no expectation or pre-perception of what 
would follow on this occasion — the sound would 
carry no secondary meaning. We must remember 
1 Cf, G, F. Stout, « Manual of Psychology," Bk, I, Ch. ii, §§, 7 and 9. 



LO INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

that in the early stages of the genesis of experience, 
what is expected is in large measure the revived 
experience of behaving in certain ways within the 
previous routine. It must be remembered too that 
meaning — (I shall use this term in reference to 
secondary meaning) — is limited to the qualifying 
revival of part of the previous routine — re-presented 
in experience but not again presented to experience 
through the channels of sense as the situation actually 
develops. 

Bearing this in mind let us return to our puppy 
and moorhen. I will first describe in physiological 
terms what I conceive to take place ; and I shall, 
for the moment, disregard the fact that the bird 
has a cerebral cortex. He is therefore, I assume, 
an unconscious automaton of the purely reflex 
order, until we take his higher brain-centres into 
consideration. Groups of effective stimuli fall upon 
the receptor end-organs of eye and ear. These 
initiate physiological impulses which are transmitted 
by the optic and auditory nerves, and throw the 
lower brain-centres into functional activity. From 
these centres two sets of impulses proceed outwards 
along efferent nerves. The first set calls into play 
the muscles concerned in diving. The second set 
is distributed to the viscera — the vascular system, 
alimentary system, respiratory system. When I 
took it out of the water the bird was panting with 
open beak, its heart-beat was strong and quick. 
Although I did not observe defecation in this case, 
I have frequently observed its occurrence in similar 
cases. It is often noticeable when young birds are 
first put into water. Now from the organs concerned 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 11 

in swimming and diving and from the heart, lungs, 
and other viscera, afferent impulses proceed inwards 
to the lower brain-centres and either initiate new 
processes therein or modify those which are already 
taking place. 

Thus there are three sets of afferent or in -going 
impulses. The first set of afferent impulses (a) is 
due to some specific mode of sensory contact with 
the environment. This through its action on the 
lower brain-centres gives rise to the two sets of 
afferent impulses (i) ;to the organs of behaviour, (2) 
to the visceral organs. And then from these organs 
come the other two sets of afferent impulses (b) from 
limbs concerned in behaviour and (c) from heart, lungs, 
etc. Is this scheme already somewhat complex? 
It is reduced to a simplicity which is probably 
absurdly inadequate to the facts. If we regard 
the dive as a whole we have to remember that 
the stimuli to eye and ear merely start the train 
of events which breaks in upon a foregoing train 
of events. Directly the bird is under water there 
are new stimuli due to complete immersion. It is 
probable that the mere fact of total immersion is 
the condition (or a condition) of the differentiated 
mode of swimming under water. There is a new 
influence of the environment as the moorhen 
approaches the bank. Is it going too far to say 
that, throughout the continuous dive, the total 
stimulation of the lower brain-centres is constantly 
varying? Is it unreasonable to suggest that each 
phase of the dive is definitely correlated with the 
progressively varying group of processes in the lower 
brain -centres ? 



[% INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

Now whether a decerebrate bird — one whose 
cerebral hemispheres had been removed or thrown 
out of action — would dive as did my moorhen in 
the Yorkshire stream, I cannot say. We have some 
data for the discussion of such a question ; and these 
will be considered in the sequel. As a matter of 
fact, however, in my moorhen, the higher brain- 
centres and cortex were intact. And I think it in 
the highest degree unlikely that the processes 
occurring in its cerebral hemispheres were without 
influence on its behaviour. This indeed is but to 
repeat in other words what I have said above — that 
in such behaviour instinct and intelligence co-operate ; 
for the cortex is the organ of intelligence ; meaning 
is correlated with cortical process. Let us then 
restore to their proper place the cerebral cortex, the 
presence of which we have so far disregarded. The 
cortex is connected with the lower nerve-centres. 
From them, or through them, it can receive physio- 
logical impulses ; to them it can transmit other 
controlling impulses. When groups of visual and 
auditory stimuli excite the receptor end-organs of 
eye and ear, not only are the lower brain-centres 
thrown into activity but, through them, certain 
regions of the cortex are excited. In and through 
this excitement the moorhen sees and hears the 
puppy. When afferent impulses reach the brain 
from the organs concerned in behaviour, not only 
is the activity of the lower brain-centres qualified 
by their effects, but through them the cerebral 
cortex is further excited. In and through this 
excitement the moorhen feels its own behaviour ; 
has the experience of swimming and diving. When 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 13 

afferent impulses reach the brain from the heart, 
lungs, and other viscera, from many parts of the 
organism, not only is the activity of the lower brain- 
centres further qualified by their added effects, but 
through them also the cerebral cortex is further 
excited. In and through this excitement, the moor- 
hen (according to the James-Lange theory of 
emotion) feels scared. At any rate they help to 
contribute to the total complex experience which 
has emotional colour. Now all these three sets of 
data unite and combine to form that part of the 
synthetic product of the bird's continuous 'experience 
which is due to the performance of the instinctive 
act. But the situation is meaningful ; and the 
incorporated (secondary) meaning is the outcome 
of previous experience which has left traces in the 
cortex and mind of the moorhen. It is in the 
highest degree improbable that even on the initial 
occasion when the bird dives for the first time, 
cortical and conscious processes exercise no control- 
ling influence on the behaviour of the moorhen. And 
just in so far as they do exercise such influence, the 
behaviour is under intelligent guidance. 

If then I interpret the matter correctly in outline, 
there was, correlated with the cortical processes of 
the moorhen as he swam in the pool, a certain 
amount of experience actually present, and a certain 
amount of individual preparation of the cortex such 
as to afford the neural conditions of revived experi- 
ence. So much to begin with. Here we have the 
moorhen as actual or potential experiencer. Then 
comes a new situation which the experiencer can 
assimilate. In this case, in so far as a new instinctive 



14 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

response is called forth, the conditions are largely 
supplied by the racial preparation of the lower brain- 
centres as the outcome of evolutionary process. The 
new factors comprise (i) a specific presentation 
differing from previous presentations in what one 
may term initiating value, (2) a specific response, 
differing in certain ways from all previous responses 
and therefore affording new data to behaviour- 
experience, and (3) a hitherto unfelt quality of 
emotional tone. I do not think that the young 
bird had ever been really scared before. But 
though we may analyse the newly experienced 
situation in some such way as this, the bird pre- 
sumably gets the whole as a coalescent synthetic 
net result with a bearing on behaviour and some, 
perhaps much, reinstatement of the meaning which 
has qualified previous situations. He just lives 
through one palpitating situation, assimilates its 
teachings, and emerges from the ordeal a new bird. 
As experiencer he is never again what he was before. 
Let us now go back to an earlier stage of our little 
moorhen's life, to near the beginning of his free 
existence, to a time when he was, not two long 
months old, an experiencer of some standing as moor- 
hens go, but when he had seen but a few brief days of 
life beyond the confines of the egg-shell. We started 
with our birdling as experiencer swimming about in 
the stream. The question I have now to consider 
is this: — How did he reach this level of conscious 
organization ? It is obvious that I cannot trace in 
detail the genesis of his experience, though I 
watched him carefully from day to day. I must select 
an episode which has some bearing upon his diving 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 15 

in the stream. It may be said that this behaviour 
was closely and intimately related with the long 
experience of swimming which he had already gained. 
But there was a time when he had no experience of 
water and swimming. I remember the day when I 
first placed him in a large bath. Even then he was 
already an experiencer having gained so much 
experience as was possible during the few hours of 
life he had enjoyed. Still, comparatively few things 
had for him, so far, become meaningful. Of swim- 
ming experience he had none. The great lake of my 
bath had for him no meaning. Racial preparation 
had however fitted the tissues contained within his 
black fluffy skin, and the subtler tissue of his lower 
brain-centres, to respond in a quite definite manner to 
the stimulation of water on the breast and legs. And 
in the first act of swimming — true to type, practically 
serviceable to secure a biological end, though needing 
that which came later, the perfecting touch of 
intelligent guidance, — in this first act of swimming 
there were afforded to his experience analogous 
factors to those I have given above in considering his 
instinctive dive — a specific presentation, a specific 
group of behaviour feelings, a specific emotional 
tone, all coalescent into one felt synthesis, developing 
in accordance with a developing situation. 

We have not yet, however, got back to the 
initial genesis of experience in our moorhen. So 
long as he brings to any given situation experience 
already gained, his very first behaviour in that 
situation may carry meaning — not very definite 
ad hoc meaning, no doubt, but still some meaning. 
Dr. Myers lays stress on this already gotten meaning, 



1<> INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

but he goes further than I am prepared to go. He 
says 1 :— "To my mind it is certain that, on the 
occasion of the chick's first peck, or the duckling's 
first swim, the bird is dimly, of course very dimly, 
conscious of the way in which it is about to act. I 
believe this because no organism can ever execute a 
new movement which does not involve other move- 
ments that have been performed previously. A 
completely new movement is as impossible as a 
completely new thought. When a chick first attempts 
to peck, many of the muscles then called into action 
must have contracted before. Thus the feeling of 
activity arising on the occasion of the chick's first 
peck is not altogether a new one. It is related, as 
each of our own experiences is related, to past 
experiences. And the very vague awareness of results, 
associated with those previous feelings of activity, 
gives the chick a vague awareness of the result of its 
first peck, before it has actually performed the action." 
Now for the present I will assume that "awareness 
of results " is synonymous with secondary meaning. 
If the chick's first peck has some dim and vague 
meaning due to foregoing use of the same muscles, 
none the less the accomplished peck supplies the data 
for new meaning — not merely meaning in terms of 
previous other-use of the same muscles, but meaning 
in terms of their specific pecking-use. It is this 
specific pecking-use which I believe to be biologically 
determined through the natural selection of variations 
(or mutations ? ) of germinal origin. I find difficulty 
in accepting the view, to be considered in the sequel, 
that it is appreciably determined by any dim and 

1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. Hi., p. 211. 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 17 

vague awareness of results which, as pecking-results, 
have never yet been experienced. With regard to the 
moorhen's first swim, then, I do not deny that when 
placed in the bath he had already gained the 
experience necessarily involved in using the same 
limbs and the same muscles in walking. But I 
conceive that when he makes his first strokes in the 
water the awareness that he is going to swim, even 
granting its existence, is so very dim and vague as to 
be negligible in comparison with the purely reflex 
tendency to swim grounded in the moorhen's 
organic constitution. As M. Bergson says l : — 
" Thousands and thousands of variations on the theme 
of walking will never yield a rule for swimming. . . . 
Swimming is an extension of walking, but walking 
would never have pushed you on to swimming." 
In the first peck or the first swim, therefore, accord- 
ing to my interpretation, we have as peck and as 
swim the instinctive factor relatively, but still only 
relatively, pure — relatively impure in so far as it is 
accompanied by such very dim and very vague 
awareness of what is coming as may be due to other 
previously gotten experience. Some slight admixture 
of intelligent meaning is still present because we have 
not yet got down to the very beginning of our 
moorhen's experience. 

If one tries to follow out to its logical conclusion 
Dr. Myers' statement that " no organism can ever 
execute a new movement which does not involve 
other movements that have been performed 
previously ; " if one tries to grasp his contention 2 

1 " Creative Evolution," p. 204. 

3 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 269. 



IS INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

that u there never can be a beginning of experience, 
— a beginning which has no relation to previous 
experience " ; one seems posed by the problem of 
infinite regress. One gets back to the embryo 
within the egg-shell, and thus to the fertilized ovum, 
and so to parents and ancestors more and more 
remote ; and still we are, I suppose, told that there 
never can be a beginning to experience ; the stage 
we have reached, no matter how remote or how 
primitive, still has relation to previous experience! 
I am fully aware that any adequate discussion of 
the place of experience in the universe must lead up 
to very difficult philosophical problems. Every 
movement regarded as a part or phase of the world- 
process is conditioned by antecedent movement like- 
wise so conditioned. Every organic movement 
however new (really new, in some cases, as I hold) 
is of course related to foregoing organic changes. 
And for those who are convinced by the arguments 
of Paulsen and others in favour of panpsychism, 
there is, of course, no beginning of consciousness ; 
and if we equate experience and consciousness, 
there is for them no beginning of experience. All 
this is, however, beyond the scope of our present 
considerations. Our universe of discourse is just 
now of a much more limited range. I assume that 
the behaviour of the moorhen has a beginning — a 
beginning that is sufficiently well marked for the 
practical purposes of our inquiry, however limited 
may be their philosophical range. I want to get, 
if possible, at the very beginning of such experience 
as correlated with such initial behaviour. And I 
therefore go yet one stage further back in the history 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 19 

of our little bird. I suggest that when the moorhen 
chick was struggling out of the cramping egg-shell 
there came what we may fairly regard as the initial 
presentations to sense, followed by the initial 
responsive behaviour in the earliest instinctive acts, 
accompanied, we may presume, by the initial 
emotional tone, coalescent in primary synthesis. 
Thus I conceive that, for scientific interpretation, 
experience has its genesis. A number of instinctive 
responses occur invirtue of the organization established 
by centuries of racial preparation as the outcome of 
natural selection or of other factors in organic 
evolution. These unite synthetically to generate 
experience. 1 It is itself dim and vague, but it can 
carry no meaning, however dim and vague, in terms 
of previous experience, for of such previous experience 
there has been none. The only meaning in this sense 
which can possibly be present is such as might 
conceivably be derived from experience previously 
gained within the unbroken egg-shell. I am ready 
to yield this much for what it is worth, merely 
remarking that for practical interpretation it is not 
worth much, and that what there is of it is of the reflex 
and instinctive order. If I may be allowed to 
neglect it as a vanishing quantity, then I conceive 
we reach the stage at which the experiencer as such 
has its primary genesis. It is called into existence by 
the earliest instinctive behaviour (whenever and 
however that earliest behaviour occurs), and here, 
for strictly scientific interpretation, I find the 

1 I have elsewhere used the expression -•" primary tissue of 
experience." I shall use it no longer, It is by no means felicitous 
and it has misleading implications. 



20 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

very first beginnings of the individual experience. 
From this primitive stage to that later stage when 
the moorhen swam in the Yorkshire stream is a far 
cry. But just as- there is one moorhen with inter- 
related parts and organs, one central nervous system 
correlating the incoming data of presentation and 
co-ordinating the outgoing nerve-impulses in respon- 
sive behaviour, so there grows up in correlation with 
the cortical-processes, one experience for which 
the presentative data acquire meaning and become 
precepts for the guidance of further behaviour. 
Thus is it, I conceive, in the case of the moorhen : 
thus is it in the case of the human infant. Such in 
all cases is the starting-point of the natural history of 
experience, the unification of which finds expression 
in behaviour and conduct. 

Such is my main thesis. I shall have to consider 
in the next chapter the question whether my 
assumption that all meaning is the result of 
individual acquisition needs qualification ; and, if 
so, whether my thesis is invalidated. I must ask the 
reader to remember that I seek to give at the outset 
an outline sketch of my view. I must ask him to 
remember that any hypothesis with regard to the 
genesis of experience must inevitably remain beyond 
the range of direct verification from the aspect of 
experiencing. I have never been a moorhen. And 
though I was once a baby, I have no memory-data 
for compiling my reminiscences during the first year. 
No one has. When did my experience begin ? At 
birth? Or was it some time later? Is what Wm. 
James calls "the big blooming buzzing confusion" 
of the early days of life to be called experience ? Or 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 21 

does experience begin when this chaos of stimulation 
becomes incipiently cosmic ? Or, again, must we 
seek the beginnings of experience before birth, when 
the child is still in the womb ? And, if so, when did 
it begin ? At what stage of the development of the 
nervous system ? Or was it even before the neural 
band was differentiated from epiblastic tissue? Has 
all vital process an accompaniment of consciousness ? 
And, if so, is all such consciousness to be called 
experience ? Such questions are easily asked. But 
only speculative imagination can furnish answers. I 
have assumed that experiencing is correlated with 
physiological processes in the cortex. Trying to look 
at the genesis of experience from as reasonable a 
point of view as my modest share of common-sense 
permits, I suggest that instinctive behaviour, 
biologically determined, affords those grouped 
stimulations which initiate cortical process, and afford 
grouped data in consciousness which may serve in 
some degree to explain (so far as it can be explained) 
the genesis of experience. 

It appears to me, then, that for purposes of 
psychological interpretation, in so far as this is 
concerned with the genesis of experience, we should 
so far broaden the connotation of the qualifying 
adjective instinctive as to include all those primary 
and inherited modes of behaviour, including reflex 
acts, which contribute in any degree to experience. 
If there be reflexes or modes of instinctive behaviour 
which have no correlated consciousness, with them 
the psychologist has no concern. He may cheerfully 
hand them over to the biologist. 

Now among the invertebrates, and especially the 



INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

insects, there arc cases of instinctive behaviour of a 
remarkably stereotyped nature. A complicated 
scries of acts, showing wonderful nicety and accuracy 
of adaptation, is performed once, and only once, in 
the lifetime of the individual without any opportunity 
of imitation so-called. These cases may conform to 
Dr. Driesch's definition * of an instinct as " a compli- 
cated reaction that is perfect the very first time." 
Dr. Myers has criticized this definition. " I question," 
he says, 2 " whether this is ever literally the case, if 
only the reaction could be submitted to close enough 
examination. . . . Instincts are almost always modifi- 
able and perfected by later experience. . . . An 
instinct which is from the first unalterable is nothing 
but a reflex." I believe that in all cases an 
instinctive act is, from the biological and physio- 
logical point of view, nothing but a reflex. But from 
the psychological point of view it is always something 
more than a reflex, in so far as it affords data to 
conscious experience. I am, however, in full agree- 
ment with Dr. Myers when he says that instincts are 
almost always modifiable and perfected by later 
experience. Dr. Driesch's brief definition applies 
only to a very limited number of instinctive 
activities. It scarcely applies at all to the instinctive 
behaviour of such vertebrates as birds and mammals. 
I have therefore suggested the following modification 
of the brief definition : Instinctive behaviour, as 
congenitally determined, is practically serviceable on 
the occasion of its first performance. Take the 

1 " Science and Philosophy of the Organism " (1908), voL ii,, 
p. no. 

• " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 211. 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 23 

flight of the swallow as an example which may 
illustrate a vast number of instinctive acts. Is 
there a biologist who has adequate acquaintance 
with the facts* who would dream of asserting that the 
instinctive performance at the outset has anything 
approaching in delicacy and effectiveness the perfected 
skill of the mature bird — a skill shot through and 
through with meaning of the highest value for 
experience of life on the wing ? l None the less, I 
am convinced from personal observation 2 that the 
relatively imperfect instinctive flight of the young 
swallow taken from the nest is practically serviceable 
and has survival value. It is good enough to preserve 
the little bird from falling to the ground and running 
the risk of destruction, the very first time it leaves the 
nest, even when, as in my own experiments, the 
normal period of flight is somewhat antedated. The 
outcome of natural selection is not to produce either 
behaviour or organic structure which is so perfect 
that no trace of imperfection can be discovered by 
the closest examination. One of the least imperfect 
organs is the normally developed human eye ; and 
yet, as we all know, Helmholtz found in the organ of 
vision many defects. 3 The products of natural selec- 
tion are practically serviceable, not theoretically 
perfect. Only where, as most markedly in the case 
of some of the instinctive activities of insects, a close 
approach to perfection is necessary in order that the 
behaviour shall be serviceable for survival of the 

1 Cf. " Animal Behaviour," p. 88. 

2 Cf. " Habit and Instinct," p. 71. 

8 "Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects,"— The Eye as an 
Optical Instrument, pp. 197, ff. 



U INSTINCT xVND EXPERIENCE 

species, do we find that it is scarcely, if at all, 
subject to further improvement. 

But if we accept the view that instinctive actions 
are susceptible of improvement under the guidance 
of intelligence, it is clear that the biological value of 
such instinctive actions includes the fact that they are 
serviceable as affording a basis for such improvement. 
Improvement implies something which can be im- 
proved ; instinctive activities supply that improvable 
something. I have said above that for purposes of 
psychological interpretation, in so far as this is 
concerned with the genesis of experience, we should 
so far broaden the connotation of the qualifying 
adjective instinctive as to include all those primary 
and inherited modes of behaviour, including reflex 
acts, which contribute in any degree to experience. 
In many cases the instinctive action, in this broader 
sense, is serviceable as a congenital factor which, 
under the guidance of intelligence, is incorporated in 
a larger whole. Mr. MoDougall, who is unable to 
accept l my modification of Dr. Driesch's brief defini- 
tion, says that while he agrees that the imperfections 
of many instinctive actions on their first performance 
render inacceptable the definition proposed by Dr. 
Driesch, he thinks that these imperfections are so 
great in many cases as to render my own definition 
untrue of much instinctive behaviour. "When the 
young kitten attentively watches the dangled button 
or the rolling ball, and makes its first futile effort to 
seize it, its behaviour is instinctive, but can hardly be 
called practically serviceable." I shall deal later 
with Mr. McDougall's general theory of instinct— a 

1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol, iii., p. 259. 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 25 

theory which is worthy of careful consideration. 
Here and now I will only say that, accepting as I do 
the cardinal features of Dr. Groos's contention that 
the biological value of animal play lies in the fact 
that it affords the instinctive basis for the further 
developed and perfected activities of later life, the 
behaviour of the kitten is eminently serviceable. 

Dr. Stout 1 regards my criterion as "too purely 
biological to meet psychological requirements," and 
supplements it by adding, as characteristic of 
instinctive behaviour, " a definiteness such as would 
require to be explained as the result of learning by 
experience or conscious contrivance, if it were not 
directly provided for by inherited constitution of the 
nervous system, as determined by the course of 
biological development" This emphasizes the 
purposive (but not purposeful) character of instinctive 
behaviour, and appears to me to be a helpful and 
acceptable supplement for purposes of description. 

I suggest then that, for the biologist and 
the psychologist, a criterion — not the only criterion, 
but a criterion of instinctive behaviour, is that it is 
serviceable on the first occasion. But the biologist, 
for the purposes of his interpretation of animal life, 
will ask : Serviceable to what end ? First of all, 
serviceable as affording the congenital foundations for 
an improved superstructure of behaviour. That is 
one way in which instinctive behaviour is serviceable 
— the way which is of special interest to the 
psychologist. From the more distinctively biological 
point of view, instinctive behaviour is broadly and 
generally serviceable for survival to which sundry 
1 G. F. Stout, <f British Journal of Psychology," vol, iii., p. 245. 



S6 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

bodily activities contribute. In further detail, 
instinctive behaviour is serviceable for avoiding 
danger, by shrinking, quiescence, or flight ; service- 
able for warding off the attacks of enemies ; service- 
able for obtaining food, capturing prey, and so forth ; 
serviceable for winning and securing a mate, for 
protecting and rearing offspring; in social animals, 
serviceable for co-operating with others, and so 
behaving that not only the individual but the social 
group shall survive. But, it will be said, surely these 
are the very ends for the attainment of which 
intelligence is also serviceable ! Unquestionably this 
is so. It is just because the many and varied modes 
of instinctive behaviour are serviceable for the attain- 
ment of the same ends for which intelligence is also 
serviceable, that their consideration is essential to the 
right understanding of the natural history of 
experience. Instinctive behaviour, which has its 
roots in organic evolution, affords the rude outline 
sketch of that far less imperfect and far more fully 
serviceable behaviour, the finishing touches of which 
are supplied by practice under the guidance of 
intelligence. The net result (what is for popular 
speech the perfected instinct) is a joint product of 
instinct and intelligence, in which the co-operating 
factors are inseparable, but none the less genetically 
distinguishable. 

I must here plead guilty to the charge of some 
laxity of expression. It is difficult at the same time 
to avoid undue pedantry and to attain some measure 
of exactness. What do I mean by saying that 
instinctive behaviour comes " under the guidance of 
intelligence"? I mean that physiologically the 



BEHAVIOUR AND EXPERIENCE 27 

functioning of the sub-cortical centres is conditioned 
by the functioning of the cortical centres. I mean that, 
psychologically, the experience begotten by behaving 
instinctively, reacts on subsequent behaviour. In so 
far as behaviour is modified or in part conditioned 
by such reaction I call it intelligent. The guidance 
of intelligence is merely a convenient form of words 
by which to indicate the influence of the condition- 
ing factor — acquired meaning ; a factor which is 
absent in the automatism of instinctive behaviour. 

But the relation of instinct to intelligence will be 
discussed more fully in the next chapter, wherein 
some criticisms of my thesis will come under 
consideration. 



CHAPTER II 

THE RELATION OF INSTINCT TO 
INTELLIGENCE 

THE specific definiteness of behaviour of the type 
to which I apply the term instinctive, is an 
organic heritage. It is dependent upon the inherited 
structure of the nervous system. According to the 
interpretation suggested in the last chapter, it is 
determined by the hereditary disposition of the 
neurones in the lower or sub-cortical brain-centres. 
But the accompanying experience is correlated with 
functional activities within the cortex. And when 
such experience has been gained it may be the 
condition of intelligent modification of behaviour. 
This interpretation is, however, open to criticism." 
Dr. Myers regards * " the separation of instinct and 
intelligence as a purely artificial abstraction." Instinct 
and intelligence are, he urges, the same process 
regarded from different standpoints. "So far as 
instinctive behaviour can be regarded from the stand- 
point of the individual experience of the organism 
it appears, however imperfectly, as intelligent — 
characterized by finalism. So far as intelligent 
behaviour can be regarded from the standpoint of 

1 u British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., pp. 209 and 270. Page 
references in brackets in this Chapter are to this volume. 

2$ 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 29 

observing the conduct of other organisms, it appears, 
however imperfectly, as instinctive — characterized by 
mechanism." " Thus the psychology and physiology of 
instinct are inseparable from the psychology and physio- 
logy of intelligence. There is not one nervous apparatus 
for instinct and another for intelligence. . . . Through- 
out the psychical world there is but one physiological 
mechanism ; there is but one psychological function — 
instinct-intelligence." I suppose the divergence of 
opinion between us partly rests upon differences in the 
definition of terms. In any case this double-aspect 
doctrine is interesting and suggestive. I cannot 
discuss it now ; nor can I here follow Dr. Myers into 
the difficult regions of finalism and mechanism. Some- 
what will be said concerning them in due course. At 
present I am only concerned to emphasize the fact 
that, so far as the consciousness of instinctive per- 
formance is under consideration, I too believe that 
there is one and only one " physiological mechanism," 
within which, as I have indicated above, neural 
processes have experience-correlates. This, in my 
interpretation, is the cerebral cortex. Just now, how- 
ever, I have nothing to do with the cortex. I must 
ask to be allowed to develop my thesis on the 
assumption that the specific nature of the instinctive 
performance is biologically and physiologically 
determined by the inherited disposition of the 
neurones in the lower sub-cortical brain-centres. 

I pause here to consider in passing a question of 
terminology. In the current popular phraseology we 
often speak of the instincts of animals, using the word 
in the plural. This plural implies the singular. But 
what is an instinct ? Mr. W. McDougall protests 



90 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

against the usage of the word instinct to denote an 
instinctive action. " It is true," he says, " that this 
has the sanction of general usage ; but to describe 
any particular action as an instinct is, I submit, a 
loose and confusing usage against which we ought to 
set our faces. We ought," he continues, "rather to 
use the term an instinct to denote that feature of the 
innate constitution of any organism, that inherited 
disposition, in virtue of the possession of which the 
organism acts instinctively ; just as we ought to 
distinguish between a habit and the habitual actions 
of which the habit is the enduring condition " (p. 253). 
I cannot regard Mr. McDougall's suggestion as quite 
satisfactory. It savours somewhat of " faculty " in- 
terpretation. It naturally arises out of his use of the 
word instinct for an inherited mental tendency 
-correlated with an inherited neural disposition. But 
even accepting his definition of instinct I question 
the propriety of calling an inherited disposition 
an instinct. Is it not better to use the adjective 
instinctive to qualify the words behaviour or disposi- 
tion, according to the context, and to use the term 
instinct, as we use the term intelligence, to serve as 
the general heading for a definite type of behaviour 
or a definite type of disposition, as the case may be ? 
Apart from this question whether we should apply 
the word instinctive to a kind of behaviour or to the 
disposition with which a kind of behaviour is correlated 
or to both, there is a wider divergence in the use of 
terms. Indeed there is scarcely any term that is used 
with greater differences of connotation. At present 
we need only consider the extension of the term 
instinctive so as to cover not only the modes of 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 31 

behaviour and dispositions which are congenital but 
also those which are acquired. The interpretation I 
have put forward involves the distinction, which I 
believe to be valid on biological grounds, between 
congenital modes of behaviour dependent upon 
inherited dispositions, and acquired modes of be- 
haviour dependent upon the modifications of these 
dispositions superinduced in the course of indi- 
vidual life. The former fall under the heading 
instinct ; the latter under the heading intelligence. 
Professor Wundt in his lectures on Human and 
Animal Psychology accepted the distinction, but 
applied the term instinctive to both kinds of 
behaviour. " Movements," he said, * " which originally 
followed upon simple or compound voluntary acts, 
but which have become wholly or partly mechanized 
in the course of the individual life or of generic 
evolution, we term instinctive actions." He here, 
therefore, divides instinctive actions into two classes, 
(i) those which are congenital and (2) those which are 
acquired. Father Wasmann, 2 too, distinguishes in- 
stinctive actions under two groups ; (1) those which 
immediately spring from the inherited dispositions ; 
(2) those which proceed from the same inherited 
dispositions but through the medium of sense experi- 
ence. The first group he regards as instinctive in the 
strict sense of the term ; the latter as instinctive in 
the wider acceptance of the term. Since we have the 
word habit as a general group name, and the phrase 

1 " Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology." English 
Translation (1894), p. 388. But Cf. " Outlines of Psychology." 
English Translation (1907), p. 317. 

2 " Instinct and Intelligence in the Animal Kingdom." English 
Translation (1903), p. 35. 



32 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

habitual actions, to apply to those modes of 
behaviour "which have become wholly or partly 
mechanized in the course of individual life " " through 
the medium of sense-experience," it is better, I submit, 
to restrict the term instinctive to congenital modes of 
behaviour dependent upon inherited dispositions. 

But I go further. I restrict the term instinctive 
in its biological acceptation to congenital modes of 
behaviour dependent upon inherited dispositions 
within the lower brain-centres} I ask that, for the 
present, I should be allowed to proceed on this 
assumption as a working hypothesis. In virtue of 
these inherited dispositions, the organism appro- 
priately stimulated exhibits adaptive responses and 
is subject to visceral disturbances. These adaptive 
responses and these visceral disturbances afford new 
stimuli which in turn affect the lower brain-centres. 
But the initial sensory stimuli, those from the motor 
organs concerned in behaviour, and those from the 
viscera, not only stimulate the lower brain-centres, 
they also stimulate the cortex of the brain. Here, and 
here only, occur those physiological processes which 
are intimately correlated with the experience process. 
Here, and here only, therefore, does experience have 
its genesis. If then I restrict the term instinctive in 
its biological acceptation to congenital modes of 
behaviour dependent upon inherited dispositions 
within the lower brain-centres, I extend the term 
instinctive in its psychological acceptation to the 
cortical experience which results from the pre- 
sentation of a situation and the correlated 
performance of a biologically instinctive action. 

1 I have here in view the higher vertebrates only. 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE S3 

In the interpretation I seek to develop, the 
primary role of the psycho-physiological functions of 
the cerebral cortex is to play down upon and control 
the functional activities of the lower nerve-centres 
and thus to modify the behaviour of the organism as 
a whole. That is their essential function at any rate 
for genetic treatment, and in their earlier 
manifestations in the life of an active organism. As 
soon therefore as the cortex is called into functional 
activity it begins to influence the sub-cortical centres 
and to modify the physiological processes which are 
going on therein. Although in a decerebrate 
animal an instinctive train of activities might, and I 
conceive would, run its course wholly in virtue of 
the inherited organization of the lower centres, in the 
uhmaimed cerebrate animal the later stages of even 
the first performance of an instinctive behaviour- 
sequence would be liable to cortical control — 
would be liable to some modification due to the 
influence of the cortex. Hence, if we regard the 
present as a short but appreciable period of time, we 
may say that present experience is constantly 
influencing present behaviour. 1 In the interpretation 
which I suggest, then, experience is correlated with 
the functional activity of the cortex ; that functional 
activity and that experience are initially called into 
being by a complex sequence of stimuli due to the 
development of an instinctive) situation through the 
integrative action of the sub-cortical brain-centres. 
But the moment it is called into being by the initial 
phases Of an instinctive sequence it is, or may be, 
influential in modifying succeeding phases of that 
1 Cf. " Animal Behaviour," pp, 45 and 47. 

D 



34 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

sequence. Such modification by cortical and 
experiential guidance is, as such, intelligent. Thus 
the instinctive and the intelligent factors in 
behaviour, closely as they are related, are dis- 
tinguishable in analysis. 

But here Dr. Stout, than whom there is no more 
acute and able critic in matters psychological, raises 
the question whether every instinctive action as such 
is not also determined by intelligence. "The 
crucial issue, here," he says, " concerns the nature of 
the mental process in the first performance of an 
admittedly instinctive action. If the first per- 
formance involves intelligence, it will not be disputed 
that the same holds true of subsequent performances " 

<P- 237)- 

Dr. Stout then turns to a' criticism of my thesis. 
"Mr. Morgan," he says, "holds that instinctive 
behaviour cannot at the outset be determined by 
intelligent consciousness. His reason appears to 
be as follows. . . . An animal, in consequence of a 
train of previous experience, intelligently modifies 
its behaviour from the outset, when it is again 
confronted with a similar situation. This implies 
what we call learning by experience. But when does 
the animal learn its lesson ? Does the actual 
process of learning take place on the second 
occasion or on the first ? Plainly it takes place on the 
first and not on the second. On the second occasion 
the lesson is utilized : but in order to be utilized it 
must already have been learned. Thus if the actual 
process of learning involves intelligent consciousness, 
intelligence must accompany every instinctive act 
which leads to intelligent modification of behaviour 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 35 

on its repetition in a similar situation. But Mr. 
Morgan's position is that an instinctive action which 
leads to intelligent modification of behaviour on its 
repetition, may none the less be itself wholly 
unintelligent. What he regards as implying 
intelligence is not the actual process of learning by 
experience, but only its product, the state of having 
already learnt by experience. Such a view seems to 
run counter to all that we otherwise know concerning 
the development of knowledge. Setting aside the 
special question concerning instinct there is nothing 
to show that learning by experience is ever an 
unintelligent process involving merely a sequence of 
blind sensations and feelings without discrimination 
and identification and without any apprehension of 
successive and simultaneous parts as related to the 
whole and to each other within the whole. 

"When it is thus exactly defined, Mr. Morgan's 
view becomes, I think, much less plausible." 

Dr. Stout at the beginning of this passage quite 
correctly states my opinion that instinctive behaviour 
cannot at the outset be determined by intelligent 
consciousness. It is, I believe, at the outset 
biologically determined by the inherited disposition 
of the neurones in the lower nerve-centres. But it 
is, from the outset, accompanied by consciousness. 
And this accompaniment of consciousness is, I 
contend, the beginning of experience in the individual 
— here we have the primary genesis of experience for 
natural history treatment. Dr. Stout asks, when 
does the animal learn its lesson, on the second 
occasion or the first ? Now, in accordance with the 
common usage of our language, I take it that to 



36 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

learn a lesson implies an already conscious learner. 
The lesson so learnt is something added to previous 
experience or knowledge. To avoid ambiguity, 
therefore, I prefer to put the question in the follow- 
ing form : — When does the animal acquire experience 
— or when does its experience begin — on the second 
occasion or the first ? I had supposed that my own 
answer to this question was tolerably clear. For my 
contention is that the animal gets its initial ex- 
perience on this first occasion, that is to say through 
the performance of instinctive actions biologically 
determined. In this sense, then, I fully agree that 
the animal learns its lesson, or acquires its experience, 
on the first occasion and utilizes it on the second. 
But when we come to the further question : — What 
is involved in such learning ? — in our answers to 
this question Dr. Stout and I are seemingly poles 
asunder. If I correctly understand the concluding 
sentence of his paragraph, there are involved in the 
very first learning by experience during the per- 
formance of an instinctive action "discrimination 
and identification ... an apprehension of simul- 
taneous and successive parts as related to the whole 
and to each other within the whole." Can I be 
mistaken ? I think not. Dr. Stout says : — There 
is nothing to show that learning by experience is 
ever " without these characteristics." I had thought 
that, for genetic interpretation, within psychology as 
a science, the apprehension of simultaneous and 
successive parts as related to the whole and to each 
other within the whole was a very late product of the 
conceptual development of human thought. I had 
even fancied that Dr. Stout himself had, more 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 37 

effectively than most men, helped me to realize this 
fact. But apparently Dr. Stout believes that all this 
is present, implicitly I suppose, at what I regard as 
the very outset of experience. There we differ. 

My own interpretation of the genesis of experience 
involves no such implicit knowledge. At the risk of 
wearisome repetition I will restate my position. Let 
me use the phrase synthetic impression for the direct 
and immediate experience which is the result of the 
felt development of an instinctive situation — say the 
pecking of a newly-hatched chick at a small object 
and all that immediately follows thereon. In the 
performance of this act a specific form of experience 
has its genesis. Now consider a second occasion on 
which the chick pecks at a similar object. Its action 
is initiated, let us say, by a group of visual stimuli. 
These visual stimuli, in so far as they affect the 
cortex of the brain, give rise to a visual presentation. 
But this presentation is only part of — only the initial 
phase of— the total synthetic impression which was 
the net result of the felt development of the whole 
instinctive situation. The rest of the original total 
impression is, on the later occasion, re-presentatively 
revived or reinstated in the cortex before it is 
presentatively supplemented by afferent nerve- 
impulses from the organs concerned in behaviour and 
by the results of that behaviour. There is a pre- 
perCeption of what is or may be just coming. The 
visual presentation has meaning and is raised to the 
level of a percept. It calls up or reinstates the past 
experience. Whereas on the first occasion the 
cortex responded in virtue of its congenital psycho- 
physiological dispositions; on the second occasion 



88 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

the cortex responds in virtue of these dispositions as 
modified by the total impression received on the 
previous occasion. Since the cortex plays down on 
the lower centres and modifies their dispositions the 
behaviour on the second occasion is different from 
that on the first. 

In the foregoing statement of my interpretation I 
used the phrase synthetic impression for the net 
result in conscious experience of the development of 
an instinctive sequence as a whole on the first 
occasion of its performance. And I said that when, 
on the second occasion, a presentation is given the 
rest of the original total impression is re-presentatively 
revived or reinstated before it is presentatively 
supplemented by afferent nerve-impulses from the 
organs concerned in behaviour and by the results of 
that behaviour. There is, I said, a pre-perception of 
what is or may be just coming ; the visual presenta- 
tion has meaning and is raised to the level of a 
percept. I think that this, in principle, accords with 
the view hitherto generally accepted by psychologists. 
Both pre-perception and secondary meaning are 
commonly regarded as dependent on revival and 
give to a presentation its perceptual value. Mr. 
McDougall has, however, suggested a different view. 
He regards what I have called the instinctive 
impression as already perceptual, and defines instincts 
as congenital perceptual systems. 1 — " The impression," 
he says, 2 " must be supposed to excite not merely 
detailed changes in the animal's field of consciousness, 
but a sensation or complex of sensations that has 

1 " Physiological Psychology," p. 106. 

8 " An Introduction to Social Psychology," p. 28. 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 39 

significance or meaning for the animal ; hence we 
must regard the instinctive process in its cognitive 
aspect as distinctly of the nature of perception, how- 
ever rudimentary." Dr. Stout in further criticism of 
my interpretation has developed the position at 
greater length. The importance of the point at issue 
is such as to justify a somewhat lengthy citation of 
his criticism. The plausibility of my view, he says, 
(p. 238), " does not wholly depend on the failure to 
distinguish between the actual process of learning, 
and its result as expressed in subsequent behaviour. 
It rests also on the supposed impossibility of mentally 
referring to the future except in the way of looking 
forward to an experience which has already occurred 
on a past similar occasion, and is now recalled by 
association. . . . This* view is plausible and may even 
appear self-evident. But it will not, I think, bear 
rigorous scrutiny. In the first place, I would point 
out that if the mind of the animal is initially aware 
only of the actual sensations and feelings belonging 
to the present moment of experience, mere revival 
by association cannot, of itself, make any difference in 
this respect." . . . Such revival " would not, of itself, 
suffice to explain the birth of the new power of 
transcending its blind and ignorant present so as to 
anticipate a future event which, as such, cannot 
actually be experienced when it is only anticipated. 
Such a power can in the last resource only be 
accounted for as involved in the fundamental nature 
of that relation between mind and reality, or between 
reality and mind which we call knowledge. 

" It will of course be said that though the faculty 
of mentally anticipating the future does not itself 



10 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

depend on the revival of the content of past experience 
through association, yet such revival may be a neces- 
sary condition of its being called into actual exercise, 
and this position, it may be conceded, has a certain 
primA facie show of self-evidence. For how, it may 
be asked, can the mind anticipate when there is nothing 
to determine what it is that is to be expected by it. 
How can it look forward to a future which is utterly 
indefinite ? And how can the direction of expectant 
thought be defined except by previous experience 
on similar occasions ? Such questions seem to me 
to admit of a simple answer. It is conceded by 
everybody, and by Mr. Morgan in particular, that in 
the first performance of an instinctive act, an animal 
is cognizant of a perfectly specific object, which is a 
complex whole of distinguishable constituents 'all 
coalescent into one felt situation.' Further, as Mr. 
Morgan himself admits and maintains, ' all experience 
involves a consciousness of process as transitional 
and in no wise static.' These points being presup- 
posed, I see no intrinsic absurdity in the assumption 
that even in the commencement of the first perform- 
ance of an instinctive action, the given situation may 
be apprehended as about to have a further develop- 
ment. Such anticipation, if it exists, is not wholly 
indefinite ; for the mental reference is to a coming 
change and development in a certain specific 
situation, and is therefore, to that extent, itself a 
specific anticipation of the future. Of course it is 
relatively indeterminate; for the animal has no 
clue to the particular character of the changes 
which arc to take place. The particular character 
of the changes only becomes specified as they 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 41 

actually occur in consequence of the instinctive 
movements which are specially provided for in the 
inherited constitution of the animal. The really 
vital point is, that when they do occur, they occur 
as the further specification of something already 
vaguely anticipated, so that each successive stage 
of the advancing experience involves not only the 
apprehension of an actual present, but of a future 
which has become present. 

" The significance of this can only be appreciated 
when we consider the process in its conative as well 
as its cognitive aspect. Given that a certain actual 
situation is apprehended as alterable, it becomes 
possible to want it altered. This accounts not only 
for the mental reference to a further development 
of the initial situation, but also for the thought of 
a development required for satisfying a felt want. 
Thus, under the conditions I am assuming, there 
will not be merely blind restlessness, but conation 
in the proper sense as active tendency directed to 
an end, which is not merely an end for an external 
observer, but for the animal itself." 

There is much in these paragraphs which seems 
to me well put with all Dr. Stout's characteristic 
subtlety, and worthy of very careful consideration. 
It is true that he reads into the consciousness of 
the animal in the naive instinctive situation a good 
deal more than I am prepared to regard as necessary 
to its adequate interpretation. Let me take one 
point in illustration. He says that it is conceded 
by everybody, and by me in particular, that in the 
first performance of an instinctive act, an animal is 
cognizant of a perfectly specific object. But the 



M INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

question arises in what sense we are to understand 
the word object. If a specific group of (let us say) 
visual data constitutes an object, then the very first 
time a chick is in this kind of conscious relationship 
with a cinnabar caterpillar there is an object of vision. 
If on the other hand we define the term object as 
denoting a group of sensory data which carries 
meaning, then the cinnabar caterpillar as, for experi- 
ence, a mere group of visual data, is not yet an object 
in this sense. It is not an object until further 
experience has supplied other data, let us say those 
of taste or of touch, which, in subsequent revival, 
may qualify the visual presentation. Then the sight 
impression carries meaning and the caterpillar is 
so far an object of perception. Let us provisionally 
grant that, prior to such further individual experience, 
there may be very dim and vague pre-perception 
of what is just going to be experienced. In that 
case the visual impression at once carries so much 
meaning as is supplied through this dim and vague 
pre-perception. Apart from this possibility, meaning 
is acquired through individual experience and raises 
the bare sensory impression to the percept of an 
object. I see no reason, however, why one should not 
speak of the caterpillar as an object for the chick, in 
the figure of prolepsis. Not yet an object strictly 
speaking, since it lacks all meaning, it is none 
the less the object that will be for perceptual 
experience. That is the sense in which I use the 
word object in discussing instinct. 

There is another, and perhaps closely allied, 
way in which Dr. Stout reads into the consciousness 
of the animal in the instinctive situation more than 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 43 

I am disposed to regard as necessary to its interpreta- 
tion. The behaviour is unquestionably purposive 
and directed to an end which the observer can fore- 
see ; but Dr. Stout regards it as in some measure 
purposeful, that is directed to an end which the 
animal itself more or less dimly foresees. In the 
one interpretation it is only quasi-conative ; in the 
other it is at least incipiently conative — conditioned 
by prospective psychological value. I question 
the presence of any true conation in instinctive 
behaviour. Therein lies the hopeless inadequacy 
of my interpretation from the point of view taken 
by Dr. Stout and Mr. McDougall. But I cannot 
here follow up this part of the subject. Dr. Stout's 
argument clearly shows, also, the way in which an 
exhaustive discussion of the problem of the genesis of 
experience leads up to large philosophical questions, 
such as "the fundamental nature of the relation 
between mind and reality." Into the broader dis- 
cussion of these questions I cannot now enter ; but 
so much of what Dr. Stout says above involves 
"the faculty of mentally anticipating the future," 
that I must try and state briefly my reading of the 
psychology of prospective reference. 

Innumerable incidental presentations of daily 
life have meaning for our behaviour in terms of its 
results. I see two water-taps over a basin which has 
a hole in the bottom. A plug attached to a chain 
hangs on one side. If I am in a mood to wash my 
hands, I either put in the plug and then turn the hot- 
water tap, or if I expect the water which first runs 
from the tap to have been chilled by standing in the 
pipe, I let the water run for a little while, and then 



44 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

put in the plug. I probably insert the plug as soon 
as the water runs warm because I expect that hotter 
water will soon follow. Such a trivial incident 
exemplifies expectation in varying phases and 
behaviour nicely adapted thereto. The whole 
business is largely dependent on the interest of the 
moment — for if I don't want to wash my hands I 
shall take no notice of the presentation to sight of 
basin and tap. Now whether, when I begin to 
turn the tap and before the water actually flows,' I 
have a definite anticipatory image of the water that 
is just going to flow ; or whether I have that much 
vaguer form of prospective meaning which may be 
termed pre-perception ; this is a question which we 
need not discuss. I certainly can form a definite 
anticipatory image ; I can picture the water which 
might be flowing from a dry tap. But whether I 
do quite normally and naturally frame such a 
definite image under the unsophisticated circum- 
stances of washing my hands at the club, I am by 
no means sure. I rather think not. To take a 
different example — so far as I can ascertain, I 
frame no definite taste-images, properly so called. 
But I most certainly have a pre-perception of 
what is just coming when I lift a cup of coffee to 
my lips. I take it that in any case, the pre-per- 
ception is the first genetic stage of prospective 
reference. And I take it there can be no question 
that the sight of basin and tap carries this form 
of anticipatory meaning, and has interest, as the 
outcome of previous experience. Now although 
we may say in popular speech that one of the 
characteristics of intelligent behaviour is that it is 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 45 

in large measure determined by the future, this is, 
of course, merely an elliptic statement of the actual 
fact that it is, qua intelligent, conditioned by 
anticipatory meaning. The future, as not yet in 
being, at any rate for scientific interpretation, cannot 
determine anything. All determination is present 
determination. 

The question is : — How does this anticipatory 
meaning originate ? Dr. Stout urges that if it is 
not present on the first occasion of the performance 
of an instinctive action, neither can it be present 
on the second occasion which is only "enriched by 
elements of the same kind reproduced by 
association." He does not make quite definite what 
he means by elements of the same kind. No doubt 
all cognitive elements, qua cognitive, are of the same 
kind ; still re-presentative elements, as such, are 
surely distinguishable from presentative elements. 
But the anticipatory meaning of which Dr. Stout 
speaks can hardly be termed re-presentative in the 
usual since of the word, since it does not follow but 
precedes presentation. I am not just now concerned, 
however, with the question whether for satisfactory 
interpretation we should assume that such 
anticipatory meaning is present on the first occasion. 
The first point for consideration is whether it must 
be then present, if ever present. Dr. Stout asserts 
that it must. As at present advised, I do not feel 
convinced that his assertion is justified. It appears 
to me that the very fact of the occurrence of re- 
presentation on the second occasion of the 
performance of what was, in the first instance, 
purely instinctive behaviour, suffices to explain quite 



Mi INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

naturally the new power of transcending the " blind 
and ignorant present." For these re-presentative 
factors — these " elements reproduced by association " 
— are on the second occasion present in experience 
just before they are, or may be, presentatively 
supplemented through actual behaviour. This affords, 
for psychological treatment, the initial stage of that 
prospective reference which becomes so character- 
istic a feature of more highly developed intelligence. 
A re-presentative factor, present in consciousness, 
anticipates, in temporal sequence, the occurrence of a 
like presentative factor. And there appears to me 
to be nothing illogical in urging that such re- 
presentative revival is a necessary condition of 
pre-perception. 

At the same time, like Dr. Stout, "I see no 
intrinsic absurdity in the assumption that, even in 
the commencement of the first performance of an 
instinctive action," there is present some dim and 
vague pre-perception of the coming development of 
the instinctive situation. There is certainly no 
absurdity in assuming that the inherited dispositions 
of the cortex are such as to furnish the neural 
basis of such vague and indefinite pre-perception as 
Dr. Stout assumes to be present ab initio. I must, 
however, lay stress on the fact that this pre-perception 
would be, for my interpretation, due to an inherited 
disposition within the cortex, whereas instinctive 
behaviour, as such, is entirely determined by 
hereditary dispositions within the sub-cortical centres. 
If this be so, even granting that Mr. McDougall's 
and Dr. Stout's assumption is correct, it nowise 
invalidates my own doctrine of instinct. The 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 47 

supposed pre-perception is something added to, and 
not part of, the instinctive consciousness. 

The question therefore turns upon the definition 
of terms. Dr. Stout and Mr. McDougall include 
under instinct the factor of pre-perception which, 
granting its presence within experience, I should 
exclude from instinct. I exclude it because I 
believe it to be correlated with ^hereditary dis- 
positions of the cortex. If it be included, how- 
ever, instinctive behaviour is conative and of the 
voluntary order. This is the view of Dr. Archdall 
Reid. Not realizing that this is implied in what 
Mr. McDougall had written, Dr. Reid says :— l " As 
far as I am aware, no one but myself regards 
instinctive actions as voluntary. Usually they are 
classed as a kind of reflex. However, I feel con- 
fident I am right." His confidence is, of course, 
justified if he so defines instinct as to make it 
voluntary ! His definition is closely accordant with 
that of Mr. McDougall. Mr. McDougall 2 defines 
an instinct as a specific and innate mental tendency, 
and holds that it carries meaning from the first. 
Dr. Reid defines an instinct as an innate and 
inherited mental impulse or inclination to do a 
certain act, and holds that it, from the first, implies 
the prompting of a desire to do the action. Dr. 
Archdall Reid does not define desire ; but I take 
it, that what he means by desire is much the same 
as what Mr. McDougall has in mind when he insists on 
the presence of meaning with prospective reference. 

1 G. Archdall Reid, " The Laws of Heredity " (1910), p. 373. 

2 Wm. McDougall, " An Introduction to Social Psychology" (1908), 
p p. 20 and 28. 



Ifi INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

Let us then grant that re-presentative revival is 
not a necessary condition of pre-perception, and that 
anticipatory consciousness may be determined by con- 
genital dispositions within the cortex. The position, 
then, within the scheme of my interpretation, is this : 
Within both the lower brain-centres and the cortex 
there are inherited structural dispositions which on 
stimulation function in a congenital manner. The 
processes in the lower centres determine what is from 
a biological point of view instinctive performance ; 
the cortex is also affected and there is correlated 
instinctive experience. But since the cortex itself 
has its inherited dispositions, there occurs a cortical 
spread of disturbance which is correlated with pre- 
perceptive or anticipatory consciousness. Just in so 
far as, through natural selection, the hereditary lines 
of cortical spread are consonant with the lines of 
sub-cortical and instinctive spread, will the antici- 
patory consciousness be consonant with that evoked 
by instinctive performance. I shall deal in the fourth 
chapter with hereditary cortical dispositions and 
innate mental tendencies. 

No doubt, as Dr. Stout says, the initial pre-per- 
ception of end to be attained is " relatively indeter- 
minate ; for the animal has no clue to the particular 
character of the changes which are to take place. 
The particular character of the changes only becomes 
specified as they actually occur in consequence of the 
instinctive movements which are specially provided 
for in the inherited constitution of the animal. . . . 
The animal will initially have no anticipation of the 
special means by which the end is attainable, or the 
special form which it will assume. It is precisely 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 49 

this deficiency which is supplied by the inherited 
constitution of its nervous system as pre-adjusted for 
a certain mode of behaviour in certain circumstances." 
But, in the form in which I can provisionally accept 
Professor Stout's doctrine of vague initial pre-per- 
ception, this too is provided for in the inherited 
constitution of the nervous system. In my view this 
is provided for in the inherited constitution of the 
cortex ; while the pre-adjustment for a certain mode 
of behaviour in certain circumstances is provided for 
in the inherited constitution of the lower nerve-centres. 
The former provides the psycho-physiological basis 
of that indeterminate interest in the situation on 
which Dr. Stout lays stress ; the latter provides for a 
further development of the situation on specific lines 
through which the interest is defined, kept up, and 
increased. There is close inter-relation and co- 
operation between instinct and intelligence. 

This brings us back to Dr. Stout's original question 
to which he reverts in the following passage : " How 
can the actual process of learning by experience, which 
is supposed to generate intelligence, be itself entirely 
unintelligent ? How can a series of experiences in 
the way of blind sensation and feeling result, on a 
subsequent occasion, in the open-eyed pursuit of an 
end ? So far as I can discover, this is supposed to 
take place merely through the revival of past 
experiences by association. But the bare revival of 
an experience cannot be or contain more than the 
original experience itself. If this consist of blind 
sensation and feeling, so will its reproduction. No 
intelligent alteration of behaviour such as animals 
actually display could be accounted for in this way. 



50 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

The intelligence is shown in a more or less systematic 
modification of the whole conduct of the animal when 
a new situation arises resembling the old one." 
(p. 242.) 

Now I have already stated my opinion that 
conscious experience accompanies instinctive be- 
haviour from its very outset and that the moment 
the cortical processes which have experience-correlates 
are initiated, they begin to play down upon and 
modify the processes within the lower nerve-centres. 
Thus I account for the beginning of experience in the 
individual, and for the beginning of its control over 
behaviour. The question therefore really turns upon 
the definition of intelligence. As Mr. McDougall 
says (p. 252) : — " Stout will not agree to restrict the 
designation intelligent to processes that involve 
modification of innately determined modes of 
behaviour ; he maintains that the process that is 
capable of resulting in such modification is ipso facto 
intelligent, whether or no such modification of innate 
dispositions be affected by it. It seems to me that 
Stout is here rejecting a very useful definition of 
intelligence which, thanks largely to the work of 
Lloyd Morgan, has become widely accepted. Will it 
not suffice to say that the activities of a nature modi- 
fiable by experience are ipso facto]ment$\ or psychical ; 
but that intelligence is not operative, is not manifested, 
if no modification of innate tendencies is affected ? " 
Dr. Stout himself clearly indicates the point at issue. 
He says, in a passage already quoted, that what I re- 
gard as intelligent is not the actual process of learn- 
ing by experience, but only its product. That is so. 
Using the terms instinctive and intelligent as 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 51 

adjectives to qualify the word behaviour, I have sought 
analytically to distinguish two types of behaviour, a 
congenital type to which the term instinctive should 
be applied and an acquired type to which the term 
intelligent should be applied. All goes smoothly 
enough so long as we are dealing with behaviour. 
But Dr. Stout, rightly I think, insists that intelligent 
behaviour is the product of intelligent process. The 
point is one of great importance and he does well to 
press it home. I believe that I am in substantial 
agreement with him though we may seem to differ. 
But I cannot discuss the matter fully here. It belongs 
to a later stage of my thesis. I shall there 
emphasize the distinction, which I regard as cardinal, 
between experience as experienr^ and experience as 
experien«Vz£*. Now whenever, so far, I have spoken 
of instinctive experience my statements have 
reference to what is experienced. And when I have 
spoken of intelligent behaviour as characterized by 
some element of meaning, the reference is to meaning 
as intelligent — as something meant. I have tacitly 
taken for granted that what is experienced implies a 
process of experiencing. Even when I have spoken 
of the moorhen as " experiencer " I have looked 
upon it as a mental organism with a quasi-objective 
structure built up of what it has hitherto experienced. 
Dealing throughout with the so-called objective 
aspect of experience, I have employed phraseology 
which some of my critics have no doubt regarded as 
tainted with the vice of associationism. I have 
described instinctive experience as compounded of 
factors all coalescent into one felt situation. I have 
said that when the behaviour is intelligent there are 



52 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

present items which are re-presented or revived. As 
long as we are dealing with the " eds " of experience 
I see no objection to regarding the more complex 
products as built up by the compounding of a 
number of more elementary factors in a higher 
synthesis. But when we come to consider the more 
vital " ing " of experience, and try in some measure 
to think mental process instead of thinking of mental 
products, then, I conceive, the terminology of 
association is wholly inapplicable. Our own mental 
life is not one in which perceiving, conceiving, 
remembering, imagining, and so forth, are con- 
tiguously associated. It is all of these, with differing 
emphasis ; and all of these at once, interpenetrating 
and merging, as M. Bergson would say. It gives rise no 
doubt to associated products ; but that is just because 
it is an associating process. If then Dr. Stout claims 
that a?i associating process must be present on the 
first occasion in order that associated products shall be 
subsequently revived, I most fully agree with him. 
And if he claims that the associating process is one 
and continuous throughout conscious life, from start to 
finish, there is really no essential difference between 
us on that matter. I can therefore, in large measure, 
if not wholly, agree with him when he says that 
" there is no special form of psychical activity which 
requires to be distinguished by the technical term 
instinct. If the term is to have a distinctive and 
useful meaning it must refer directly, not to a form 
of psychical process, but to purely biological adapt- 
ation comparable to the prearrangements of structure 
and function which in human beings subserve the 
digestion of food" (p. 243). This in the main 



INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 53 

expresses my own view. The sequence of instinctive 
experience, correlated with a physiological sequence 
in the cortex, though it is a conscious sequence, 
and though it affords data for an associating process, 
is not in itself a psychical process proper, because its 
course is not determined by conscious relationships, 
but is determined by purely organic and physiological 
relationships, comparable to those which subserve the 
digestion of food. It is just for this reason that I do 
not regard it as conative, since I conceive that it is of 
the essence of conative process that it is determined 
by conscious relationships with their attendant 
psychical values. All intelligent process is truly 
conative since it is determined by conscious relation- 
ship to an end more or less clearly anticipated. It is 
just because Dr. Stout regards pre-perception as 
always present as a condition of the course of mental 
process, that he is fully justified in urging that 
intelligence and conation are, so far, in being ab 
initio. 



CHAPTER Til 

REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 

I HAVE approached the consideration of behaviour 
from the biological side, though I seek also to 
correlate it with its accompanying experience. 
Taking, for example, the graceful and effective flight 
of the swallow on the wing which would popularly 
be regarded as an instinctive performance, I regard 
much of its delicate accuracy, and the nicety of its 
accommodation to varying circumstances, as due to 
intelligent guidance, the outcome of much experience 
gained on previous occasions and now utilized on 
this occasion. Some slight improvement may be 
due to the repeated functioning of the lower nerve- 
centres as such : some further improvement is no 
doubt due to the continued development and matur- 
ing of these centres. But more improvement is, I 
conceive, due to cortical influence. I do not suggest, 
and have never dreamt of suggesting, that the flight 
of an adult swallow would be what it is, and as it is, 
in the absence of such interaction between the higher 
and the lower nerve-centres. But tracing backwards 
the story of flight-development in the individual bird 
— piecing together such a story from what appear to be 
trustworthy observations — I reach the stage when 

54 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 55 

the swallow first dives from the nest. 1 I am satisfied 
that on this first occasion we have true flight, in the 
absence of any previous experience of flight as such. 
If it be said that the young bird has had ample 
opportunities of seeing its parents fly, and has 
already learnt to fly by watching them, I venture to 
assert that in no such manner can a skilled act 
be learnt. If even a man cannot learn to fence or to 
play billiards by watching others who are skilled 
exponents, and this notwithstanding the fact of the 
large amount of control over his bodily activities 
already acquired by long experience and practice in 
other fields of skill, how can we expect a fledgling 
swallow to learn to fly by watching his parents, see- 
ing that he has never yet put his wings to their true 
functional use ? I do not deny that he has already 
some experience of fluttering his wings within and on 
the edge of the nest. I am ready to grant him so 
much experience before he dives from the nest ; but 
I contend that the actual flight, when he commits 
himself to the wing, is a substantially new experience. 
Again I do not deny that during his very first flight 
he is, all the time of its continuance, gaining ex- 
perience ; nor do I deny that the experience thus 
being gained from moment to moment is from 
moment to moment influential on his effective flight. 
Provisionally I am prepared to admit the possible 
presence of exceedingly dim, vague, and ill-defined 
pre-perception of the behaviour that is coming, just 
before it actually comes; but I assume that all 
experience is the conscious accompaniment of the 
functional activity of the cortical centres, and that 
1 For details, see "Habit and Instinct," p. 71, 



56 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

this should analytically be distinguished from the 
subtly compounded reflex actions of the lower centres 
by which instinctive behaviour as such is determined. 

Dr. Myers has said 1 : — " The old view that 
instincts are merely * complex reflexes ' dies hard. 
Even Professor Lloyd Morgan, if I understand him 
correctly, hesitates to relinquish it." Dr. Myers 
might have gone further ; for, from the physiological 
and biological point of view I have not the smallest 
hesitation in retaining it. That, in my opinion, is 
just exactly what primarily, and in their first intent, 
they are — complex reflexes, constituting adaptive 
behaviour of the organism, the nature of which is 
determined by the inherited structure and the 
physiological dispositions of the sub-cortical nerve- 
centres. It is these complexly co-ordinated reflexes 
which determine instinctive behaviour as I define it ; 
and if the organism were possessed only of sub- 
cortical centres there would be the end of the matter. 
But it so happens that the organism is possessed also 
of cortical centres. Afferent impulses from the whole 
behaving animal — impulses arising out of all that 
occurs from the initial stimulation to the final 
response — reach the cortex, stimulate it [to functional 
activity, and thus afford data of conscious experience. 
If then we regard instinctive behaviour as, primarily 
and from the biological point of view, the outcome of 
complex reflexes, we must also regard instinctive 
experience as, secondarily and from the psychological 
point of view, the synthetic product of the data afforded 
by instinctive behaviour. 

| Regarding the interpretation of behaviour from 
1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 210. 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 57 

the physiological point of view, we have now to direct 
our attention to the relation of instinctive performance 
to reflex-action on the one hand and to cortical 
control on the other hand. My summary account of 
reflex phenomena is based on Dr. C. S. Sherrington's 
admirable work. 1 I shall adopt his terminology 
and in stating some of his conclusions shall often use 
his own words. The simplest reflex involves three 
distinguishable but related processes ; initiation by a 
stimulus, conduction, and end-effect ; and for these 
three processes there are three separable structures, 
the receptor for the initiation, the effector for the end- 
effect, and, between these two, the conductor. Now 
such processes occur in the unicellular organisms ; 
but, in them, separable structures are not clearly 
differentiated. Whether it is desirable to apply the 
term " reflex " to the behaviour of protozoa we need 
not here discuss. Dr. Sherrington thinks it better to 
reserve the term for reactions involving specifically 
recognizable nerve-processes, and morphologically 
differentiated nerve-cells — involving, that is to say, a 
reflex-arc, with receptor, conductor, and effector. 
The reflex therefore implies the existence of organic 
processes within the constituent structural cells ; and 
it suggests, if it does not necessarily imply, the 
existence of physiological processes in the organic 
substance which intervenes between the cells. Such 
a simple reflex is then, for physiological interpretation 
the unit reaction in nervous integration. The idea 
we form of a simple reflex is, however, an abstract 
and analytic conception ; because all parts of the 

1 C. S. Sherrington, "The Integrative Action of the Nervous 
System " (1906). 



38 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

nervous system are connected together and probably 
no part of it is ever capable of reaction without affect- 
ing and being affected by various other parts. In 
any case it only exhibits in ideal simplicity the first 
grade of co-ordination. It is obvious that if the 
integration of the animal mechanism is due to 
co-ordination by reflex action, reflexes must them- 
selves be co-ordinated with one another ; for the 
co-ordination by reflex action there must be co- 
ordination of reflex actions. This is the second 
grade of co-ordination. By further compounding of 
reflexes the net result is an orderly co-adjustment 
and sequence of reactions in the organism as a whole. 

Now if I have so far rightly expressed Dr. 
Sherrington's conclusions, these questions arise: — 
How far does this process of the compounding of 
reflexes extend ? In the progressive development of 
nervous function is there some stage at which 
another and a different process supervenes? If so 
what is the physiological nature of this different 
process ? Granted that there are two processes, does 
the difference between them coincide with the alleged 
difference between compound reflex action and 
instinctive behaviour? Leaving these questions for 
the present unanswered we may consider first the 
integration that is effected by the spinal cord ; 
secondly the integration which takes place when not 
only the spinal cord but the sub- cortical brain-centres 
are effective ; and thirdly the nature of the further 
integration which is brought about by the functional 
activity of the cerebral cortex. 

We have seen that our conception of a simple 
reflex is the product of abstract thought. It is the 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 59 

unit reaction which is reached by the physiological 
analysis of the functional process of a highly complex 
nervous system. It seems to involve at least three 
structural units or neurones — very often more than 
three, but at least three. There is on the one hand 
the receptive neurone proceeding from the receptor to 
the grey matter of a segment of the spinal cord ; 
there is on the other hand the effective neurone 
connecting the grey matter of that or another segment 
of the spinal cord with the effector in gland or 
muscle ; and between these lies the third neurone, 
within the spinal cord, connecting the other two. 
Into the details of minute structure we need not 
enter. The matters of emphasis are ; first that the 
several neurones are separable but related cells ; 
secondly that the cells are functionally coupled at 
the synapses, where delicately branching tufts of the 
one cell come into relation with those of the other 
cell ; thirdly that the conduction across the synapse 
is always, under normal conditions, forward towards 
the effector ; fourthly that crossing the synapse 
involves some resistance and delay in the passage 
of the nervous impulse through the arc, and that 
this resistance is variable ; and lastly that, if we 
regard the connexions within the simple reflex arc 
as primary connexions, we must remember that there 
are indefinitely numerous secondary synaptic con- 
nexions, with other neurones. Obviously this last 
feature is of great importance. Isolated though it 
may be for abstract thought, the simple reflex is never 
isolated in functional activity ; if it were so isolated 
the integration of reflexes would be a physiological 
impossibility. 



60 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

What we commonly term a reflex act is generally a 
pretty complex matter and, in its normal occurrence, 
involves other reflexes. Take, for example, the 
well-known scratching reflex of the dog. If some part 
of a large saddle-shaped area around and behind the 
shoulder be irritated, vigorous scratching of the 
hind-foot of that side follows. But how far this 
is from the simple reflex reached by abstraction ! 
It involves rapidly alternating flexion and extension ; 
and it further involves such modification of other 
reflexes as is implied by the fact that the dog has to 
stand on three legs while he scratches with the 
fourth. He may at the same time turn his head, 
open his mouth, prick his ear, bend his tail and so 
forth. Moreover the dog seems to " know " just 
where to scratch ; further forward or further back in 
accordance with the position of the pulex irritans, 
which affords the initiating stimulus. Now does 
the dog thus act by the compounding of reflexes, or 
does he act instinctively or again does he act 
intelligently ? I take it that the normal dog " knows " 
that he is scratching in the sense of just having a bit 
of scratching experience ; and I see no reason why 
we should deny that he to some extent guides his 
scratching in accordance with the nature of the 
experience he is getting. Translating this into 
physiological terms the cortex is called into activity 
and exercises some influence over the scratching 
process. But how shall we translate into 
physiological terms the relation between the 
instinctive response and compound reflex action ? 
Shall we say, quite provisionally, that if it involves 
sub-cortical brain-centres we may term it instinctive ; 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 61 

while if it involves no centres higher than those 
in the spinal cord we may regard it as a compound 
reflex ? If so we must remember that the distinction 
is quite provisional. 

Now much of Dr. Sherrington's illuminating 
work on reflex action has been carried out on the 
" spinal animal." It is found that an animal will 
recover from the effects of the operation of transect- 
ing the spinal cord in the region of the neck. By 
this operation the normal connexion between the 
brain and the parts of the spinal cord below the 
level of transection is severed, and it is possible 
to study the integrative action of the disconnected 
spinal cord. If we assume that conscious experience 
is correlated with the functioning of cortical 
neurones, the spinal animal as such is an un- 
conscious automaton. On this view, which for the 
present we may provisionally accept, the reflex 
phenomena are the outcome of physiological 
mechanism, or, to use a preferable phrase, of 
physiological integration. We shall have to consider 
at a later stage of our inquiry the relations of 
mechanism to vitalism and finalism. Here and now 
it suffices to emphasize the fact that the natural 
processes of the organic world, of which the integra- 
tive action of the nervous system is a conspicuous 
example, differ in many important and essential 
respects from the natural processes of the lifeless 
inorganic world. If therefore one speaks of the 
mechanism of the nervous system, it must be under- 
stood that one does so without philosophical implica- 
tions, using the term descriptively ; and that one is 
dealing with living mechanism subject to those 



62 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

specialized conditions which it is the aim of 
physiology to elucidate. 

The scratching reflex is readily elicited in a 
spinal dog, either by gently plucking some of the 
hairs on the receptive saddle-shaped area, or by 
electric stimulation with a fine needle, very lightly 
inserted in the skin near the hair-roots. There is 
some differentiation of the response in accordance 
with the locality of the stimulus. Thus, when the 
irritation is far forward the foot is carried farther 
forward ; when the irritation is far back the foot is 
carried farther back. To bring about the response 
the stimulus must be of sufficient intensity. There 
is a threshold of excitability which varies according 
to the circumstances. Apart from the fact that the 
receptor has its own threshold, the reflex arc as a 
whole offers some resistance to the passage of the 
nervous impulse ; for the synapses interpose barriers 
to the passage, and if the whole arc is to be called 
into activity both receptor and synaptic thresholds 
must be surpassed. But by summation of subliminal 
stimuli the reflex may be elicited. If a spot on the 
receptive area be stimulated so slightly that no 
response follows, and if the exciting electric needle 
be applied at successive not too short intervals to 
other neighbouring spots with like absence of result, 
it is none the less found that when two or three of 
these spots are simultaneously stimulated the scratch- 
ing reflex is elicited. Two stimuli of the receptive 
neurones of allied spots, each of which is by itself 
ineffective, combine to constitute a sufficient stimulus 
calling the effector neurones into play. So, too, a 
succession of subliminal stimuli on the same spot, 



/ 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 63 

and perhaps still more a succession of subliminal 
stimuli on closely allied spots, serve to evoke the 
response. Under normal circumstances scratching 
results from an allied series of slight irritations. 
That's where the flea comes in. In the case of some 
reflexes there is an added allied reflex from the 
receptors in muscles, sheaths and tendons which are 
stimulated by the muscular activity. Although the 
receptor portion of this reflex arc is obviously quite 
different from that which proceeds from the skin, 
it seems to make use of the same effector neurone, 
and thus supplements the initiating reflex. This is 
the case in the flexion-reflex of the leg. This reflex 
is elicited by a sharp pin-prick on the sole of the 
foot ; but added strength is given to this reflex when 
the leg is flexed. The reflex excited by the muscles 
in action allies itself with the reflex excited by the 
pin-prick on the footpad or between the toes. A 
subliminal stimulation of the afferent nerve of the 
hamstring muscle, if it be applied simultaneously 
with a subliminal stimulation of the foot, results in 
a marked flexion reflex, though neither stimulus by 
itself suffices to do so. In both these reflexes, there- 
fore, we have an effector path common to more than 
one receptor path, the stimuli from which act in 
alliance upon the effector organ. 

The pin-prick on the foot gives rise to a flexion 
reflex drawing up the leg, and thus removing the foot 
from the source of injury. The same stimulus which 
excites the muscles which bend the leg at the same 
time inhibits those which extend it. But if, instead of 
applying a prick or electric stimulus, smooth and 
gentle pressure be applied to the foot between the 



64 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

pads, the result is different. A strong, brief exten- 
sion follows called the extensor thrust. It is 
generally accompanied by a similar brief extension 
of the three other limbs. The flexion reflex and the 
extensor thrust are antagonistic. They cannot both 
occur at once in the same limb. Similarly with the 
scratching reflex. A dog, whether it be normal or 
spinal, cannot scratch both sides at once with both 
hind feet. Now suppose the left leg is scratching in 
response to a stimulus from the left shoulder ; a 
stimulus on the right shoulder will inhibit the 
response of the left leg, though the stimulus on the 
left shoulder is still continued. It is clear, therefore, 
that both stimuli, that which provokes and that, from 
the other side, which inhibits, take effect through the 
same effector neurones. 

We are thus led up to the principle of the 
common path. I am throughout giving expression, 
partly in his own words, to Dr. Sherrington's results. 
Here I condense his description (p. 115). "At the 
commencement of every reflex arc is a receptive 
neurone extending from the receptive surface to the 
central nervous organ. This neurone forms the sole 
avenue which impulses, generated at its receptive 
point (or small group of points) can use, whither- 
soever their destination. This neurone is therefore 
a path exclusive to the impulses generated at its own 
receptive point, and other receptive points than its 
own cannot employ it. . . . But at the termination 
of every reflex arc we find a final neurone, the 
ultimate conductive link to an effector organ. This 
last link of the chain differs obviously in one 
important respect from the first link of the chain. It 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 65 

does not subserve exclusively impulses generated at 
one single receptive source, but receives impulses 
from many receptive sources situate in many and 
various regions of the body. It is the sole path 
which all impulses, no matter whence they come, 
must travel if they are to act on the muscle-fibres to 
which it leads. Therefore, while the receptive 
neurone forms a private path exclusively serving 
impulses of one source only, the final or efferent 
neurone is f so to say, a public path, common to 
impulses arising at any of many sources of reception. 
. . .Before finally converging upon the motor neurone, 
the arcs converge to some degree. Their private 
paths embouch upon internuncial paths common in 
various degree to groups of private paths. The 
terminal path may, to distinguish it from internuncial 
common paths, be called the final common path. 
The motor nerve to a muscle is a collection of final 
common paths." 

But though the impulses from a number of private 
paths thus converge upon the common final path 
they may also so affect other neurones in the spinal 
cord as to give rise to a distribution to other final 
paths. Thus the effector discharge elicited from a 
single point of prick stimulation in the hind limb 
may be distributed to the muscles at hip, knee, and 
ankle. The reflex throws into contraction the flexor 
muscles of each of these joints ; it also throws into 
contraction the extensor muscles of the opposite 
limb ; and it at the same time causes a relaxation of 
the extensor muscles in the flexed leg. If the spinal 
cord, as the result of other reflexes, happens to be 
sending impulses to these extensor muscles, the 



66 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

flexion reflex has the effect of inhibiting the 
discharge. The result is that, when reflex action 
occurs, not only are the flexor muscles made to 
contract, but their antagonists, the extensors, are at 
the same time relaxed. This automatic throwing of 
antagonists out of action is of much service in further- 
ing co-ordination. If there be two coincident reflexes 
in extensors and flexors, respectively, the result is 
either this reflex or that reflex, but not the two 
together. " The flexor reflex, when it occurs, seems 
to exclude the extensor reflex, and vice versa. If 
there resulted a compromise between the two reflexes, 
so that each reflex had a share in the resultant, the 
compound would be an action which was neither the 
appropriate flexion nor the appropriate extension. 
Were there to occur at the final common path 
algebraical summation of the influence exerted on it 
by two opposed receptive arcs, there would result in 
the effector organ an action adapted to neither, and 
useless for the purposes of either." 

These purely physiological results have an 
important bearing on the interpretation of instinctive 
behaviour and its early modification through the 
meaning it acquires. The chick which has had 
experience of a nauseous insect, acts differently 
when it comes upon a similar insect on a subsequent 
occasion. But his different behaviour is not a mere 
compromise between originally successive reflexes, 
though some signs of compromise, accompanied by 
apparent hesitation, may sometimes be observed. 1 
More commonly the pecking reflex is entirely 

1 Cf. G. F. Stout, " British Journal of Psychology," vol. in., pp. 
242, 243. 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 67 

inhibited by the cortical process which carries 
meaning. We do not find at the same time or in 
rapid succession a combination of pecking at the 
insect and ejection from the bill. We find one 
reflex or the other reflex or neither ; or perhaps the 
one with diminished efficacy. We seldom get any 
muddling up of the one with the other. That is not 
the way in which behaviour normally develops. The 
very familiar fact of the swiftly-established avoidance 
of the unpleasant or the painful, — a fact which is of 
the utmost importance for the theory of the guidance 
of behaviour in a world where pain is a warning of 
danger to the organism — this fact may be correlated 
with that prepotency of noxious stimuli, when there 
is any competition for the use of a common path, to 
which attention will presently be drawn. 

To revert now to the physiological teachings of 
the spinal animal the "dilemma between reflexes 
would seem," says Dr. Sherrington, " to be a problem 
of frequent occurrence in reflex co-ordination. We 
note an orderly sequence of actions in the movements 
of animals, even in cases where every observer admits 
that the co-ordination is merely reflex. We see one 
act succeed another without confusion. Yet, 
tracing this sequence to its external causes, we 
recognize that the usual thing in nature is not for 
one exciting stimulus to begin immediately after 
another ceases, but for an array of environmental 
agents acting concurrently on the animal at any 
moment to exhibit correlative change in regard to it, 
so that one or other group of them becomes — 
generally by increase in intensity — temporarily 
prepotent. Thus there dominates now this group, 



68 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

now that group in turn. It may happen that one 
stimulus ceases coincidently as another begins, but 
as a rule one stimulus overlaps another in regard 
to time. Thus each reflex breaks in upon a condition 
of relative equilibrium, which latter is itself reflex. In 
the simultaneous correlation of reflexes, some reflexes 
combine harmoniously, being reactions that mutually 
reinforce. These may be termed allied reflexes, and 
the neural arcs which they employ, allied arcs. On 
the other hand, some reflexes, as mentioned above, 
are antagonistic one to another and incompatible. 
These do not mutually reinforce, but stand to each 
other in inhibitory relation. One of them inhibits 
the other, or a whole group of others. These reflexes 
may in regard to one another be termed antagonistic ; 
and the reflex or group of reflexes which succeeds 
in inhibiting its opponents may be termed prepotent 
for the time being" (p. 119). 

It is characteristic of such reflexes as scratching 
that there is alternation of flexion and extension-— 
an alternation which gives rise to a rhythm of about 
four strokes per second. This seems to be mainly 
due to the fact that following the excitation of the 
flexors there is a refractory state during which the 
mechanism shows diminished excitability. Such 
a refractory state allows for phases during which 
stimuli fail to excite, alternating with phases in which 
the stimuli easily excite. In the scratch-reflex the 
refractory period is short — less than one-fifth of a 
second. But in the extensor thrust it is relatively 
long, lasting for nearly one second. For this period 
of time the stimulation of the foot fails to elicit 
another extensor response. As the extensor thrust 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 69 

is probably an important element in the mechanism 
of the dog's locomotion, the biological utility of the 
prolonged refractory state is suggested. " After the 
extensor-thrust, the limb has to be given over to the 
flexor muscles in order, without touching the ground 
to swing forward in preparation for the next step by 
the limb. It is reasonable to suppose that part of 
the means by which selective adaptation has secured 
this result is the evolution of the long refractory 
phase following the activity in the reflex arc of the 
extensor-thrust " (p 69). 

The phenomena of spinal irradiation and induc- 
tion, together with fatigue effect, serve to render the 
combination and co-ordination of reflexes more 
effective. A strong stimulation gives rise to spinal 
disturbance which spreads from that focal response 
which is normal for a normal stimulus, to other 
allied responses. But the spread is an orderly 
spread. Thus, as stimulation of the foot for the 
flexion-reflex is increased, the extension of the 
opposite hind limb becomes more marked, then 
follow in the fore limb of the same side extension 
at elbow and retraction at shoulder, then in the 
opposite fore-limb flexion at elbow, extension at 
wrist and some protraction at shoulder ; also turning 
of the head towards the stimulated side, and often 
opening of the mouth and lateral deviation of the 
tail (p. 151). "The stimulus which excites a reflex 
tends by central spread to facilitate and lower the 
threshold for reflexes allied to that which it par- 
ticularly excites. A constellation of reflexes thus 
tends to be formed which reinforce each other, so 
that the reflex is supported by allied accessory 



70 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

reflexes, or if the prepotent stimulus shifts, allied arcs 
are by the induction particularly prepared to be 
responsive to it or to a similar stimulus" (p. 206). 
This is termed by Dr. Sherrington immediate spinal 
induction. In successive induction it would seem 
that, in the case of a reflex which is accompanied 
by the inhibition of an antagonistic reflex, this 
inhibition is followed by a phase of exalted activity. 
During the flexor-reflex, for example, the extensor 
arcs are inhibited ; but after the flexor-reflex these 
opposing arcs are in a state of exalted excitability. 
Hence the flexor-reflex, if intense and prolonged, 
may, directly its own exciting stimulus is discontinued, 
be succeeded by a " spontaneous " reflex of extension. 
By virtue of this spinal contrast, therefore, the flexion- 
reflex predisposes to and may actually induce an 
extension-reflex, and conversely an extension-reflex 
predisposes to and may actually induce a flexion- 
reflex. This process is qualified to play a part in 
linking reflexes together in a co-ordinate sequence 
of successive combination (pp. 208, 212). 

Another condition influencing the issue of com- 
petition between reflexes of different source for 
possession of one and the same common path is 
fatigue. " It prevents the too prolonged continuous 
use of the common path by any one receptor. It 
precludes one receptor from occupying for long 
periods an effector organ to the exclusion of all 
other receptors. It favours the receptors taking 
turn and turn about. It helps to ensure serial variety 
of reaction" (pp. 214, 222). Since the efferent 
neurone forms a final common path for an indefinite 
number of receptors, one would expect that it would 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 71 

not, like them, be readily susceptible to fatigue, and 
this expectation is justified by experimental evidence. 
There are, too, certain reflexes which persist for long 
periods. These are the reflex postures. The hind 
limbs of the spinal frog assume a squatting attitude 
which is reflex. Similarly in the spinal dog or cat, 
certain muscles exhibit a slight but persistent con- 
traction. This is observable in those muscles 
whose action antagonizes gravity. The reflex- 
arcs concerned in the maintenance of this tonic 
contraction of muscles have been shown in several 
cases to arise within those muscles which exhibit 
the reflex tone. 1 Of all reflexes these tonic re- 
flexes of ordinary posture are, in Dr. Sherrington's 
experience, the most easily interrupted by other 
reflexes. "If various species of reflex are arranged 
in the order of their potency in regard to power to 
interrupt One another, the reflexes initiated in recep- 
tors which, considered as sense organs, excite sensa- 
tions of strong affective quality, lie at the upper 
end of the scale, and the reflexes that are answerable 
for the postural tonus of skeletal muscles lie at the 
lower end of the scale. One great function of the 
tonic reflexes is to maintain habitual attitudes and 
postures. They form, therefore, a nervous back- 
ground of active equilibrium. It is of obvious 
advantage that this equilibrium should be easily 
upset, so that the animal may respond agilely to 
the passing events that break upon it as intercurrent 
stimuli" (p. 231). 

In this passage Dr. Sherrington places at the 

1 C. S. Sherrington, "Encyclopaedia Britannica," nth Ed., vol. 
xxv., p. 675. 



72 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

top of the scale of potency the reflexes which, in 
the intact animal, have conscious concomitants of 
strong affective quality. It is noteworthy that even 
in the decerebrate animal, in which, by transection, 
the cortical connexions have been severed, these 
reflexes are prepotent over others. " It is those 
areas, stimulation of which, as judged by analogy, 
can excite pain most intensely, and it is those stimuli 
which, as judged by analogy, are most fitted to 
excite pain which, as a general rule, excite in the 
spinal animal — where pain is of course non-existent — 
the prepotent reflexes. If there are reactions to 
specific pain-nerves, this may be expressed by saying 
that the nervous arcs of pain-nerves, broadly speaking, 
dominate the spinal centres in peculiar degree. 
Physical pain is thus the psychical adjunct of an 
imperative protective reflex. It is preferable, 
however, since into the merely spinal and reflex 
aspect of the reaction of these nerves no sensation 
of any kind can be shown to enter, to avoid the 
term pain-nerves. Remembering that the feature 
common to all this group of stimuli is that they 
threaten or actually commit damage to the tissue 
to which they are applied, a convenient term for 
application to them is nocuous. In that case what, 
from the point of view of sense, are cutaneous pain- 
nerves are from the point of view of reflex reaction 
conveniently termed noci-ceptlve nerves. In the com- 
petition between reflexes the noci-ceptive as a rule 
dominate with peculiar certainty and facility" (p. 
228). 

I have culled from Dr. Sherrington's illuminating 
work examples of the integrative action of the 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 73 

nervous system in the spinal animal. From the 
cases cited it is abundantly clear that even in the 
spinal animal a reflex act is not to be regarded as 
an isolated response, save for the purposes of 
physiological analysis. Any given reflex tends to 
facilitate other allied reflexes and to inhibit other 
antagonistic reflexes. How this inhibition is effected 
we do not fully understand. It unquestionably 
plays an important part in spinal integration. In the 
spinal animal what takes place at any given moment, 
or in a brief period of time during which reflexes are 
enchained in orderly sequence, depends on the 
spinal pattern, set or disposition. " It is not usual," 
as Dr. Sherrington tells us, " for the organism to be 
exposed to the action of only one stimulus at a time. 
It is more usual for the organism to be acted on by 
many stimuli concurrently, and to be driven reflexly 
by some group of stimuli which is at any particular 
moment prepotent in action on it. Such group often 
consists of some one pre-eminent stimulus, with 
others of harmonious relation reinforcing it, forming 
with it a constellation of stimuli, that, in succession of 
time, will give way to another constellation which 
will in its turn become prepotent" (p. 178). If then 
there is, in'the spinal animal, a constellation of stimuli, 
breaking in upon the existing physiological process 
in the cord, and resulting in behaviour which is 
purposive, adaptive, and enchained in definite 
sequence, are we to term the net result in response 
compound reflex action or instinctive behaviour ? 
Looking at the matter from the standpoint of the 
observation of behaviour — disregarding the conscious- 
ness which would normally accompany the behaviour 



74 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

in the unmaimed animal — this question is not easily 
answered. Dr. Sherrington sees (p. 266) " no wide 
interval between the reflex movements of the spinal 
dog whose foot attempts to scratch away an irritant 
applied to its back . . . and the reaction of the 
decerebrate dog that turns and growls and bites at 
the fingers holding its hind foot too roughly . . . 
which is probably the reaction of an organic machine." 
Granted, then, that the spinal animal gives evidence 
only of compound reflex action, the decerebrate 
animal seems to be capable of behaviour which, as 
such, would assuredly be termed instinctive by the 
biological observer. 

To the decerebrate animal therefore we now turn — 
that is to say the animal in which the cerebral hemis- 
pheres and their cortex have been destroyed, leaving 
however, the sub-cortical centres and the spinal cord 
intact and functionally effective. We need not delay 
over the familiar and oft-quoted case of the frog of 
which Michael Foster 1 said that in the absence of 
the cerebral hemispheres it " can by the application 
of appropriate stimuli be induced to perform all or 
nearly all the movements which an entire frog is 
capable of executing. . . . The nervous machinery 
required for the execution, as distinguished from the 
origination, of bodily movements even of the most 
complicated kind, is present after complete removal 
of the cerebral hemispheres, though the movements 
are such as to require the co-operation of highly 
differentiated afferent impulses." If then we may 
trust such observations as those on which these 

1 " A Text Book of Physiology," 7th Ed. Part iii. (1897), pp. 
1073-6. 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 75 

conclusions are based, they seem to support the view 
that the decerebrate frog performs, if not all, at any 
rate a great number of activities which are of the 
instinctive order. Such a frog according to Dr. Max 
Schrader x catches flies, buries itself in the mud in 
the cold season, and takes to the water when the 
warmer weather comes. 

In the decerebrate pigeon 2 " the appearance and 
behaviour of the bird are strikingly similar to those 
of a bird exceedingly sleepy and stupid. It is able 
to maintain what appears to be a completely normal 
posture and can balance itself on one leg after the 
fashion of a bird which has in a natural way gone to 
sleep. . . . Placed on its side or its back it will 
regain its feet ; thrown into the air it flies with 
considerable precision for some distance before it 
returns to rest. It frequently tucks its head under 
its wings, and at times may be seen to clean its 
feathers ; when its beak is plunged into corn it eats. 
It may be induced to move not only by ordinary 
stimuli applied to the skin, but also by sudden loud 
sounds, or by flashes of light ; in its flight it will, 
though imperfectly, avoid obstacles, and its various 
movements appear to be to a certain extent guided not 
only by touch but by visual impressions." In the 
bird as in the frog it would seem that " the parts of 
the brain below or behind the cerebral hemispheres 
constitute a nervous machinery by which all the 
ordinary bodily movements may be carried out." 

1 Max Schrader, " Zur Physiologie des Froschgehims," Pfliiger's 
Archiv. Bd. xli. (1887). Schrader's results are summarized by Loeb, 
11 Comparative Physiology of the Brain," chapter ix. 

2 M. Foster, op. cit. p. 1078. 



76 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

According to Dr. Schrader the sleepy and stupid 
condition of the decerebrate pigeon passes by after a 
few days when the shock-effect of the operation has 
diminished. Such a bird flies from one place to 
another with perfectly co-ordinated movements and 
alights, for example on a bar, like a normal bird. It 
sleeps at night ; but during most of the day wanders 
about restlessly and untiringly. It avoids obstacles, 
but " to these animals all objects are alike. They 
have no enemies and no friends. They live like 
hermits, no matter in how large a company they find 
themselves. The languishing coo of the male makes 
as little impression on the female deprived of its 
cerebrum as the rattling of peas or the whistle which 
formerly made it hasten to its feeding-place. Neither 
does the female show interest in its young. The 
young ones that have just learned to fly pursue the 
mother, crying unceasingly for food, but they might 
as well beg food of a stone." l If these observations 
are correct it looks as if much behaviour of the 
instinctive order is relatively unaffected ; and the 
salient fact seems to be that, with the destruction of 
the cerebral cortex, many objects and many stimu- 
lations appear to have lost all meaning. 

Turning now to observations on mammals, accord- 
ing to Dr. Goltz 2 the decerebrate dog "would lie 
curled up like a normal dog ; it could be aroused by 
the loud blowing of a horn, and by blowing through a 

1 Max Schrader, " Zur Physiologie des Vogelgehirns," Pfltiger's 
Archiv. Bd. xliv. (1889) quoted by Loeb., op. cit. p. 244. 

2 F. Goltz, " Der Hund ohne Grosshirn," Pfliiger's Archiv. Bd. li. 
(1892). See F. W. Mott in "A System of Medicine," edited by 
Allbutt and Rolleston, vol. vii. (1911), p. 257. 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 77 

tube a current of air on to its skin, when it would 
raise itself on its four legs and shake itself. If the 
animal had been roused by the blast of a horn, it would 
put its paw up to its ear as if something unpleasant 
had happened. When the animal was removed from 
the pen,' as it was every day, to be fed, it growled, 
snapped, and snarled like an angry brute, and resisted 
and struggled to be free and return to its cage ; it 
showed, in fact, exactly the same signs of anger as the 
decerebrate dog, whose sciatic nerve was stimulated 
in Sherrington's experiment — lowering of the head, 
bristling of the hair, retraction of the ears, and growl- 
ing, biting and snapping. Although removal from the 
cage every day would have meant to the normal 
animal appeasement of hunger, yet this animal every 
day for eighteen months, until the day of its death 
under chloroform, gave the same instinctive signs of 
anger, and never joy, fear, or affection." Similarly in 
the decerebrate cat, Dr. Sherrington (p. 255) could 
never evoke such expression as might, had the cerebral 
hemispheres been present, have been indication of 
pleasurable sensation. Never, for instance, could 
purring be elicited, although its opposite, snarling 
was obtained so easily. It must be remembered that 
pleasure is probably always an affective accompani- 
ment of meaning ; whereas what we interpret as pain 
may be a physiological reaction to noci-ceptive stimuli. 
The one is correlated with cortical process ; the other 
need not be so correlated. Dr. Goltz's decerebrate 
bitch " made no distinction between a stranger and the 
man who had fed her every day. She had no memory, 
but still possessed desires as physiological tendencies 
and instinctive reactions. When hungry . . . she 



78 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

performed continuous pacing movements ; moreover, 
she would place her two forepaws on the front of the 
cage, standing on her hind legs. She would maintain 
her position on four limbs on a smooth and sloping 
surface and defecated normally." Dr. Sherrington 
found (p. 306) that even in the spinal dog defecation 
was invariably followed by a number of vigorous 
kicks with the hind limbs. Dr. Goltz's dog refused 
to eat meat which had been soaked in a solution of 
quinine. He adds that he threw to his own house 
dog a piece of the same doctored meat. The animal 
took it eagerly, pulled a wry face and hesitated. But 
on a look of encouragement from his master the dog 
swallowed it. He overcame his instinctive rejection 
of it and thus, as Dr. Goltz remarks, by his self- 
control gave proof of the intact cerebrum he 
possessed. 

It will be observed that in the decerebrate animal 
there are sundry expressions of the emotions. It 
must be remembered that if we assume that correlated 
consciousness is restricted to the cortex these are purely 
physiological responses. From certain experiments 
on newly-born puppies Dr. Pagano 1 concludes that in 
the basal ganglia of the brain — that is in sub-cortical 
centres — there are found at birth physiological 
preorganized mechanisms of emotional reactions. 
The cerebral cortex not being functional at birth is, 
therefore, not indispensable for expressive reactions 
of the same kind as those which accompany emotional 
states. Dr. Pagano concludes also that the superior 
psychical centres which are superimposed on the 

1 Pagano, M Archives Italiennes de Biologie " (1906). See Mott, op. 
cit. 258. 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 79 

lower centres are only a new source of stimulus for 
primordial expression, but at the same time the 
origin of secondary modifications of emotional 
expressions. Dr. Sherrington (p. 254), however, 
draws attention to the fact that hemicephalic children 
in total absence of the cerebral hemispheres and of 
the midbrain with its basal ganglia, seem to react as 
do normal infants of the same age to stimuli that, 
judging from adult experience, are unpleasant. 
They cry or whimper, pucker the mouth, and retract 
the head. The drawing down of the angles of the 
mouth and the drawing down of the lower lip seem 
indicative of pain : pouting of the lips seems to 
indicate pleasure. Of course these facts are not 
adduced to show that in the expression of normal 
children the thalamus is not implicated ; they are 
adduced further to emphasize the fact that for certain 
forms of expression the cerebral cortex is not 
necessarily implicated. 

I have now cited from the works of accredited 
representatives of physiological investigation and 
interpretation — and cited as far as possible in their 
own words lest I should misrepresent their statements 
— some evidence which seems to show that behaviour 
of the instinctive order, as regarded from the bio- 
logical standpoint, is due to the integrative action of 
sub-cortical centres. Such evidence appears to me 
to justify the provisional hypothesis that what the 
biologist terms instinctive performance is the outcome 
of inherited sub-cortical dispositions. These dis- 
positions are, on this view, the structural correlate of 
the functioning of a completely organized system of 
neural arcs. How they function at any given moment 



SO INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

depends upon the inherited organization, upon the 
constellation of stimuli to which they are subjected at 
that moment, and upon the way in which they are 
already functioning. Whether we draw the line 
between compound reflex action and instinctive 
behaviour at some ideal transection at the base of the 
bulb, appears to be a matter of little importance. 
More important is the question whether there is any 
essential difference between spinal integration and 
sub-cortical brain integration. I conceive that there 
is no essential difference. There is fuller and richer 
alliance between groups of reflexes ; there is more 
subtle inhibition of other groups ; there is a more 
complex and more widely effective phase of adapt- 
ation. But if sub-cortical behaviour is rightly termed 
instinctive, then I see no reason for hesitating to 
regard it as compound reflex action, in the sense that 
it is the outcome of progressive complication in the 
effective co-ordination of reflexes. 

The psychologist will, however, object that from 
his point of view, and within his universe of discourse, 
instinct is a mode of conscious experience and that it 
is misleading, if not absurd, to apply this term to 
phenomena which ex hypothesi are unconscious — un- 
conscious, that is to say, on the assumption that 
consciousness is correlated with cortical process. So 
be it. Let it be freely granted that the spinal or 
the decerebrate animal is unconscious and is therefore 
incapable of instinctive experience. That surely does 
not show that the entire and intact animal is destitute 
of such experience. It does not show that the cortex, 
when normally present, does not receive impulses 
from the organism that is behaving under sub-cortical 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 81 

integration. It must be remembered that these 
cervical transections, this ablation of the cerebral 
hemispheres, are means to physiological analysis. 
The value of observations in the physiological 
laboratory lies not so much in the information they 
afford with respect to the maimed animal, as in the 
insight they give for the much more important task 
of the interpretation of the normal animal's behaviour. 
Only thus can we attain, through the privileged and 
responsible work of trained investigators, sure data 
for assigning to special parts of the nervous system 
their special functions and thus inferring their normal 
relationships. The outcome of physiological analysis 
of the kind we have been considering is that complex 
behaviour of the instinctive type is determined by the 
hereditary dispositions of the sub-cortical centres. 
But the lesion which cuts off impulses from the cortex, 
cuts off also impulses to the cortex. I submit as a 
not unreasonable doctrine in the present state of our 
knowledge, that in the entire animal orderly impulses 
due to the performance of determinate behaviour 
reach the cortex and there generate the instinctive 
experience — or let us rather say the instinctive factor 
in experience. In the normal life the impulses 
arising out of the behaviour (including of course its 
receptive initiation) break in upon a cortex which is 
already functioning. This functioning as a whole has, 
as its conscious correlate, the changing continuum 
of experience. To this continuum the instinctive 
experience is assimilated. The existing pattern of 
experience is modified and rearranged. Just as the 
simple reflex is an abstract concept which refers to 
that which probably never occurs in isolation, so is 

G 



88 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

the instinctive experience an abstract concept — 
having reference no doubt to an indefinitely more 
complex object of thought, but none the less abstract. 
In its isolation, save for analytical thought and the 
interpretation of a larger whole within which it is 
component — in its isolation, I say, it perhaps cannot 
exist as constituting experience, it can only co-exist 
with factors of like order. The utmost we can say is 
that, in the genesis of experience, the instinctive 
responses afford the nearest approach we can conceive 
to the primary pattern which ruffles the surface of the 
relatively uniform continuum of hitherto indefinite 
consciousness. 

I have said above that we must bear in mind 
that the lesion which cuts off physiological impulses 
from the cortex, cuts off also afferent impulses to the 
cortex. The latter give rise to those cortical changes 
which are the neural correlates of instinctive experi- 
ence ; the former in some way effect the control of 
instinctive behaviour by the cerebral cortex — control 
by that part of the nervous system which, as we have 
provisionally assumed, alone possesses the adjunct 
of consciousness — hence, in our elliptic phraseology 
conscious control. There can be no question about 
the fact of this control. But, as Dr. Sherrington says 
(pp. 388-390), " it is urgently necessary for physiology 
to know how this control is operative upon reflexes, 
that is how it intrudes and makes its influence felt 
upon the running of the reflex machinery. ... Its 
analysis has not proceeded far. We may premise," 
he adds, " that some extension of the same processes 
as are operative in simultaneous and in successive 
combination of reflexes, must be operative in this 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 83 

control. There we saw reflexes modifying each 
other, and the more complex reactions being built 
up from simpler and more restricted ones. Some 
extension of the same process should, in view of our 
inferences concerning the nature and dominance of 
the brain, apply here also." " Looking at the matter 
from a purely physiological point of view," said 
Michael Foster (p. 1078), "the real difference between 
an automatic act and a voluntary act is that the 
chain of physiological events between the act and 
its physiological cause is in the one case short and 
simple, and in the other case long and complex." 

I take it that in the ideal construction which it is 
the aim of the physiologist to frame, the principles of 
integration are fundamentally the same throughout 
the central nervous system. No essentially new 
process different in principle from other integrative 
processes occurs in the cortex. What does occur is, 
it would seem, the intercalation of new groups of 
arcs which permit of the associative connexions 
which are acquired in the course of individual life. 
We cannot assert as a proven fact, but we may infer 
from such facts as we do possess, that the cortex is 
the pre-eminent, if not the only, part of the nervous 
system in which such acquired association takes 
place. It is pre-eminently, or perhaps exclusively, 
the organ of educability, and hence the organ of 
intelligent control. We have seen that inhibition is 
by no means the prerogative of the cortex only. 
Inhibition and facilitation are seen in the integrative 
processes of the spinal cord. It is not improbable, 
however, that acquired inhibition, like acquired 
association, is characteristically a cortical function. 



84 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

But the purely physiological conditions are not 
known. Psychical factors are at once suggested, 
and we pass to a quasi-psychological explanation ; 
in so doing we confess our physiological ignorance. 
By whatever method of cortical linkage of neural arcs 
it is effected, acquired control often carries with it 
inhibitions which are hereditarily bound up with the 
controlled act. We can control our swallowing ; 
but the act of swallowing automatically inhibits 
respiration ; it seems also to have an automatic 
inhibitory effect on the heart-beat. 

Simple forms of acquired association have been 
brought into the field of laboratory practice by Dr. 
Pawlow. 1 If acid fluid be placed in a dog's mouth 
there is a reflex which affords an increased flow of 
saliva. By placing a cannula in the duct of the 
submaxillary gland the rate of flow can be deter- 
mined. Let some other sensory organ be stimulated 
at the same time as the mouth is moistened with the 
acid solution. For example let a horn be blown in 
an adjoining room every time the acid fluid is placed 
in the dog's mouth. After a while the blast of the 
horn affords an auditory stimulus which in and by 
itself gives an increased flow from the salivary gland. 
Indeed Dr. Pawlow found that any stimulus which 
was made coincident with the acid-in-the-mouth 
response may be, by the establishment of associative 
connexions, rendered a sufficient stimulus for increased 
flow of saliva. A new set of receptive neurones are 
connected up with the common path to the effector 

1 Pawlow, " Scientific Investigation of the Psychical Faculties 
or Processes in Higher Animals," Huxley Lecture, 1906. " Lancet," 
1906, ii., p. 911, Cf. Mott, op, cit., p. 251, 



REFLEX ACTION AND INSTINCT 85 

gland. I am not aware whether such experiments 
have been made with decerebrate dogs. We do not 
know whether such new connexions can be established 
in the sub-cortical centres without the intervention of 
the cerebral cortex. If by further physiological 
research it should be shown that this is the case, it 
would but serve to indicate, what is not inherently 
improbable, that new receptor inlets for the evoking 
of instinctive response may be established without 
necessarily calling into play the intelligent or 
cortical arcs of the central nervous system. New 
connexions may be acquired within the lower centres 
without the intervention of the integrating influence 
of the cortex. 

Be this as it may, Dr. Pawlow's experimental 
results confirm the general conclusions which may 
be drawn from observations dealing with acquired 
modifications of behaviour. Those who lay 'stress 
on the motor aspect of instinctive behaviour, and 
consider it in the light of physiological research, 
regard it as the functional outcome of a complexly 
organized system of final common paths. That is 
the essential feature of the hereditary disposition of 
the lower nerve centres. The receptor side is less 
rigidly stereotyped. That is to say, a closely similar 
response may be, and often is, the outcome of the 
play of environmental situations which have only 
a general likeness — which vary to some extent, 
sometimes to a considerable extent, in detail. The 
situation which evoked the moorhen's dive need not 
have been just that which I have briefly described. 
As Mr. McDougall has well said, 1 such " an instinct 
1 " Introduction to Social Psychology," p. 37. 



86 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

has several innately organized afferent inlets, through 
each of which its central and afferent parts may 
be excited without the other afferent inlets being 
involved in the excitement." As life proceeds the 
inlet side of the behaviour business becomes further 
organized through experience. The birds which 
remain unmoved while the express train thunders 
by, may precipitately scatter at the yapping of a 
little dog. The organization of experience in its 
early stages is, in large measure, the organization 
of perception, the acquisition of meaning, and the 
correlation of the data afforded by the special senses 
with the data afforded by the responsive behaviour 
itself. This is in large measure the result of acquisi- 
tion in the course of individual life. None the less 
this acquisition is itself dependent on hereditary 
dispositions and innate tendencies to the considera- 
tion of which we must now proceed. 



CHAPTER IV 

HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS AND INNATE 
MENTAL TENDENCIES 

IN an oft-quoted passage, too frequently torn from 
its context, Dr. Groos contends l that " the idea 
of consciousness must be rigidly excluded from any 
definition of instinct which is to be of practical 
utility," since "it is always hazardous in scientific 
investigation to allow an hypothesis which cannot 
be tested empirically." I take it, however, that the 
question before Dr. Groos, when he wrote these 
words, was that of origin. The question was not : 
Does consciousness accompany instinctive perform- 
ance ? The question was : Does instinctive per- 
formance owe its genesis to the guidance of conscious- 
ness? or, as Dr. Groos himself puts it, in words 
immediately preceding those which I have quoted : 
" Is this useful adjustment attributable to conscious 
will ? " It is to this question that he gives a negative 
answer. His whole thesis implies an accompaniment 
of consciousness ; " the feeling of pleasure," he says, 
" that results from the satisfaction of instinct is the 
primary psychic accompaniment of play " (p. 288). 
It is abundantly clear from a perusal of Dr. Groos' 

1 Karl Groos, "The Play of Animals " 4 ( 1898). Translated by 
Elizabeth L. Baldwin (1901), p. 62. 

87 



88 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

work, that his contention is that the origin of instinct 
is to be sought in the field of biological inquiry ; that 
within this field the idea of consciousness as exercis- 
ing guidance in origin is to be excluded ; but that 
the consciousness which accompanies instinctive 
performance affords data for intelligent modification 
of behaviour through practice and exercise. 

In dealing with instinctive performance from the 
strictly biological point of view the question of the 
existence or non-existence of the psychological 
accompaniments may be, and often is, ignored. 
Thus Dr. and Mrs. Peckham 1 place under the term 
instinct " all complex acts which are performed 
previous to experience, and in a similar manner 
by all members of the same sex and race, leaving 
out as non-essential, at this time, the question of 
whether they are or are not accompanied by con- 
sciousness." The exclusion of the psychology of 
instinct is here purely methodological. The question 
for general biology is whether the behaviour is, as 
a matter of observation, adapted to the environing 
circumstances on the occasion of its first occurrence, 
or is brought into closer relation to these circum- 
stances by acquired accommodation. The question 
for physiology is whether the behaviour is due to 
certain inherited connexions among the neurones 
of the central nervous system, or is due to con- 
nexions which have been established in the course of 
individual life. Both general biologist and physiolo- 
gist may ignore the question whether certain psycho- 
logical relationships are also present ; but only 

1 George W. and Elizabeth G. Peckham, "On the Instincts and 
Habits of the Solitary Wasps" (1898), p. 231. 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 89 

because they do not fall within their special field 
of study. 

If, however, we see reason to believe that some 
animals learn by experience, we have to admit 
the existence of psychological relationships. And 
if we assume that some of the vital processes of 
the animal organism are correlated with conscious 
experience, we have to face the question : If some, 
why not all ? We have to consider the problem of 
the relation of life to consciousness throughout the 
whole range of organic evolution and development. 
It may be that, as Dr. Titchener l believes, " con- 
sciousness is as old as animal life, and that the first 
movements of the first organisms were conscious 
movements." Or it may be that consciousness 
appeared later than life, and if so we have to face 
the questions: When, from what source, and under 
what conditions ? If we accept the former alterna- 
tive and hold with Dr. Titchener " that the earliest 
movements were conscious movements, and that all 
the unconscious movements of the human organism, 
even the automatic movements of heart and intes- 
tines, are the descendants of past conscious move- 
ments," we have the speculative difficulty of explain- 
ing the lapse of consciousness in certain admittedly 
unconscious movements. If on the other hand we 
accept the second alternative we have the speculative 
difficulty of explaining the rise of consciousness 
from the lap of the unconscious. In the one case 
something vanishes ; in the other case something new 
appears. What course shall we take ? We shall 
ignore these speculative difficulties. There are 

1 E. B. Titchener, " A Text-book of Psychology " (191 1), p. 451. 



90 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

certain phenomena of organic behaviour which 
seemingly cannot be explained unless we take into 
consideration experiential relationships like those 
which are conditions of our own conduct — relation- 
ships which really count, in that their presence or 
absence makes a real difference. We accept them as 
existent, just in so far as they appear to be necessary 
for scientific interpretation, and no further. As effective 
relationships they seem to be correlated, in the higher 
vertebrates, with functional processes in the cortex. 

What, then, do I mean by effective consciousness ? 
I mean consciousness which involves so much pre- 
perception as to condition the course of behaviour. 
On this depends all profiting by experience. Now 
whether there be some dim and vague pre-perception 
in the first instinctive performance ; or whether this 
only comes as the result of previous individual 
performance ; in either case something of the nature 
of conscious perception is a prior condition to pre- 
perception. In any interpretation on the lines of 
natural history, if the perceptual preparation be not 
provided in the life-history of the individual, it must 
be provided in the life-history of the race. But if 
effective consciousness, as pre-perceptual, is con- 
ditioned by previous perception, it is clear that such 
previous perception itself involves the conscious 
relationship. Hence there can, I think, be little 
question that consciousness must be present in 
correlation with certain dominant vital processes 
before behaviour guided by pre-perception affords to 
us sufficient evidence that it is a condition that counts 
in evolutionary progress and in the development of 
any given organism. 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 91 

Apart from speculation, therefore, it is a question 
of evidence — evidence peculiarly difficult to obtain 
and to assess at its true value. Still the question is : 
Is there, in this or that organism, evidence that the 
behaviour is guided by pre-perception ? If there is, 
then we are, I take it, bound to infer the prior 
presence of perceptive consciousness in order to 
interpret its origin. As the result of very careful and 
valuable observations on the infusoria, Dr. Jennings 
has brought forward the evidence which satisfies him 
that in them some behaviour is guided by pre- 
perception. I am not quite satisfied by the evidence. 
But though I have elsewhere taken up a sceptical 
attitude, I am fully prepared to admit that there is a 
reasonable probability that the behaviour of some of 
these lowly organisms may be conditioned by pre- 
perceptual consciousness. We ought not to deny 
the presence of consciousness in any animal ; but we 
ought [to require good evidence of pre-perceptual 
guidance. That seems to be essential. 

How then, it may be asked, do I propose to 
square such a view with the reiterated assumption 
that in the higher vertebrates — those in which a 
cortex is well differentiated — conscious guidance is 
specially correlated with cortical conditions? Here 
again it is entirely a matter of evidence. As at 
present advised — taking into consideration Dr. 
Sherrington's work on the spinal animal, and the 
observations recorded by skilful observers on the 
animal deprived of its cortex — I do not find satis- 
factory evidence that the reflex behaviour is 
conditioned by pre-perception. The outcome of 
further research may very possibly lead me to alter 



1)2 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

my opinion. If so, I shall, I hope, be ready to admit 
that I was mistaken. Till then I must continue to 
hold the views that I have indicated, and draw the 
line between the cortex and the sub-cortex. I see 
no evolutionary reason why we should not accept the 
conclusion, to which the facts seem to point, that as 
perception and pre-perception rise to higher grades 
of development, they are concentrated in, and perhaps 
limited to, just the very highest modes of process in 
the most delicately organized part of the central 
nervous system. I am therefore inclined to surmise 
that the line should not be drawn in the lower 
vertebrates where I am assuming that it should be 
drawn in birds and mammals. It is quite possible, 
nay, more, I incline to regard it as probable, that the 
line shifts upwards as the nervous system is evolved 
in the race and developed in the individual. 

There is one more point on which I would fain, if 
it be possible, make clear my position. It may be 
said that to limit the conscious relationship to cortical 
process is absurd, since experience, as such, refers 
not to events in a particular part of the brain, but 
to events in the external world — the shining of a 
distant planet for example. But I take it that in 
such a case it is ideally possible to trace a complete 
series of correlations from certain events in the planet 
to certain events in the cortex and thence onwards, 
let us say, to certain events in the instrument by 
which a record of the moment of the planet's transit is 
made. The conscious relationship is a link in the 
correlated chain between the star and the instrument ; 
for I assume that in its absence the observer would 
not record the transit. Now I do not think we are 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 93 

able to explain how this conscious relationship in a 
long chain comes to refer to distant terms at either 
end of the correlation series. I do not, of course, 
mean that psychology has nothing to say on the 
subject ; it has much to tell. I mean that, as it 
seems to me, the story psychology tells is that of a 
correlation of such references, so that this comes to 
mean that ; but, for the present at any rate, we have 
to accept that reference, in some initial form, as part 
of the constitution of experience. No doubt from the 
evolutionary point of view the reference is initially in 
the direction from which the stimulus comes along 
the afferent nerve. But some such reference seems 
to be just a given fact which we must accept. If this be 
so, it is immaterial whether the specific physiological 
alliance is within the cortex, or extends from the 
receptor through the cortex to the effector, as indeed 
it may do for all we know. The essential point is 
that the cortex is functionally implicated ; and that 
if it be not so implicated there is, it would seem, no 
satisfactory and trustworthy evidence that the 
conscious relationship is present with guiding value. 

Quite provisionally, then, I assume that effective 
consciousness — that which is connected with the 
profiting by experience, is correlated with cortical 
process. Now both cortical processes and sub- 
cortical processes are dependent on connexions 
among the neurones of the central nervous system ; 
some of these connexions seem to be congenital ; 
others appear to be acquired in the course of 
individual life. Instinctive behaviour, as I have 
described it, seems to be dependent on congenital 
connexions in the sub-cortical centres. But there 



94 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

are also congenital connexions in the cortical centres. 
To these are due the innate tendencies or inherited 
dispositions to be considered in this chapter. 

There is perhaps some ambiguity in the contrast 
between the congenital and the acquired. Especially 
is this the case when we use hereditary and congenital 
as equivalent terms. There is a sense in which it 
may be said that every organic or mental process or 
product is, broadly considered, based on hereditary 
transmission — or, in stricter phrase, historically 
correlated with preceding phases of process along the 
line of parents and ancestry. No doubt we cannot 
act or think in any way, unless we inherit the ability 
or capacity thus to act or think. In this sense all 
acquisition depends on an innate power of acquiring. 
If, with Sir E. Ray Lankester, we contrast congenital 
instinct with educability, we must remember, as he is 
careful to show, that educability is, in this broad 
sense, an inherited character. Similarly, in an 
equally broad sense, everything is acquired. The 
adult possesses a number of characters which, since 
they were not present, as such, in the fertilized ovum, 
are, in this broad sense, acquired in the course of 
development. This is not, indeed, the technical sense 
in which biologists are, for the most part, agreed to 
use the term. And it sounds a little extravagant, 
to those who employ the term in its technical sense, 
when Dr. Archdall Reid * claims that normal racial 
characters are " acquired " under " the stimulus of 
nutriment " ; for, in these racial characters the 
hereditary factors of correlation far outweigh any 

1 G. Archdall Reid, "The Laws of Heredity" (1910), pp. 208, 
431, 432. 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 95 

specific correlation there may be with the nature of 
the so-called stimulus— that is with the necessary 
conditions of nutriment, appropriate temperature, and 
so forth. What are generally regarded as acquired 
characters are those which are definitely correlated 
with the conditions under which the bodily tissues 
undergo modification. 

But we cannot here discuss a somewhat subtle and 
technical problem. It must suffice to put the matter 
thus : — Every organism has an inherited constitution ; 
and every organism develops amid an assemblage of 
surrounding conditions. Now in the case of some 
organic and mental products the emphasis seems to 
lie in the inherited constitution ; in the case of others 
the emphasis seems to lie in the response to incident 
conditions. In the former the hereditary correlation, 
in the latter a definite correlation with the circum- 
stances, is predominant. Some modes of bodily and 
mental behaviour come with a minimum of learning, 
the emphasis being on the coming rather than on 
the learning ; others come by much learning, the 
emphasis here being on the learning rather than on 
the coming. Innate tendencies and inherited dis- 
positions come with the constitution ; of course the 
appropriate conditions must be there, but the stress 
is on the constitution. 

That capacity is a constitutional trait — is what 
every one who deals with the problem of heredity 
admits, nay, contends. We scarcely need to be told 
by Dr. Archdall Reid with all the emphasis of italics 
that " if we wish to avoid hopeless confusion it 
is necessary to distinguish between two entirely 
different things ; between, on the one hand, capacity 



96 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

to make mental acquirements, and, on the other the 
mental acquirements themselves. . . . The ability is 
inborn and tends to be inherited by offspring ; the 
acquirements are not " (p. 421). And it is questionable 
whether there is any one, who has considered the 
problems of heredity, in even the most superficial 
manner, who fails to realize that innate capacity has a 
constitutional tendency to be developed in more or 
less definite lines. " While it is possible," says Dr. 
Archdall Reid, " that some geniuses may be men 
endowed with exceptional all-round capacity, they 
are usually distinguished from the average type by 
exceptional capacity in some particular department 
of mental activity. It is probable, for example, that 
Shakespeare had more poetic capacity (i.e. power of 
responding to poetic experiences, of recording and 
learning to utilize such experiences), and less artistic 
capacity than Michael Angelo, who presumably had 
less mathematical capacity than Newton, who in turn 
had less military capacity than Napoleon, who again 
was inferior in philosophic capacity to Darwin" 

(P. 436). 

I quote this passage, not because I think its 
author would claim for it any striking originality, but 
to raise the question whether such innate differentia- 
tions of inherited capacity should be termed instinctive. 
We are here within the sphere of intelligence, and 
indeed within the narrower sphere of that higher 
order of conceptual intelligence which approaches or 
reaches the level of genius. Are we still also within 
the sphere of instinct ? It may be said that human 
genius is a kind of instinct, and that Mozart took to 
music as instinctively as a duckling takes to water. 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 97 

For both, of course, the necessary medium must be 
presented ; but both deal with this medium with a 
facility due to hereditary dispositions. If, then, all 
specialized hereditary dispositions are to be termed 
instinctive, and if all performance conditioned by 
such dispositions is likewise to be termed instinctive, 
we must admit the presence of an instinctive factor 
which permeates the whole of our intellectual life. 

We here open up a question of considerable 
importance. In an endeavour to reach some definite 
conclusion in the matter we must first ask whether 
accredited writers apply the term instinctive to 
hereditary tendencies in the sphere of the intellect. 

Thomas Reid considered instinctive belief as one 
of the best gifts of nature. 1 " Children,'* he says, 2 
" have everything to learn ; and, in order to learn, 
they must believe their instructors. . . . They 
believe a thousand things before they ever spend a 
thought on evidence. Nature supplies the want of 
evidence, and gives them an instinctive kind of faith 
without evidence." An example of " belief which 
seems to be instinctive, is that which children show 
even in infancy, that an event which they have 
observed in certain circumstances, will happen again 
in like circumstances." Similarly Adam Smith 
says 3 : — "There seems to be in young children an 
instinctive disposition to believe whatever they are 
told." Hamilton, commenting on Reid, urges that 
11 the terms instinctive belief, judgment, cognition, are 

1 Thomas Reid, « Works," edited by Sir Wm. Hamilton (6th Ed. 
1863), p. 184. 

2 Ibid., p. 549. 

3 Adam Smith, " Theory of Moral Sentiments," pt. vii., § 4. 

H 



98 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

expressions not ill adapted to characterize a belief, 
judgment, cognition, which, as the result of no 
anterior consciousness, is, like the products of animal 
instinct, the intelligent effect of (as far as we are 
concerned) an unknowing cause. In like manner 
we can hardly find more suitable expressions to 
indicate those incomprehensible spontaneities them- 
selves, of which the primary facts of consciousness 
are the manifestations, than rational or intellectual 
instincts." 

But all this, it may be said, is a matter of past 
history. Hamilton, 1 with his marvellous erudition, 
may cite a cloud of witnesses in favour of the usage of 
the term instinctive in this manner ; but have we not 
re-defined the term since those days ? Let us turn 
then to a philosopher of our own times. M. Bergson 
has elaborated a doctrine of instinct which we shall 
have to consider at some length. But in the follow- 
ing passages the word is used in a general sense. 
"The impulsive zeal," he says, 2 "with which we 
take sides on certain questions shows how our 
intellect has its instincts." He speaks of the 
tendency to accept a mechanical interpretation of 
things as " the mechanistic instinct of the mind " ; 
he tells us that " intellect instinctively selects in a 
given situation whatever is like something already 
known " ; he affirms that " common-sense instinctively 
distinguishes between the two kinds of order " — that 
is, the vital order and the inert order, which for 
M. Bergson are strongly contrasted in nature and in 

1 Hamilton's " Reid," p. 761. 

2 " Time and Free Will," Eng. Translation by F. L. Pogson 
(1910), pp. 134-135- 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 99 

origin ; he speaks of " a strong instinct which assures 
the probability of personal survival " ; he lays stress 
on " the cinematographical instinct of our thought," 
that is, our tendency to deal with events in continuous 
progress, not in their steady flow of insensible change 
and becoming, but as a series of isolated snap-shots 
taken like instantaneous photographs in the camera 
of thought. 1 Now these and other such expressions 
have reference to innate intellectual capacity ; but 
they have reference to something more than a 
general store of capacity or fund of educability. 
There is reference in each case to a process having a 
definite direction. And the term instinctive is used 
to emphasize the fact that the specific direction is 
not, or not only, the result of intelligent acquisition, 
but is the outcome of hereditary dispositions. For 
though, in M. Bergson's philosophy, the hereditary 
dispositions are made by Life or Consciousness for 
its own free use ; yet, as thus made and thus used, 
they are embodied in the " canalized " nervous 
system, so that, at any rate, " everything is bound to 
happen as if perception were a consequence of the 
state of the brain. 2 

It may perhaps be said that the passages I have 
culled from M. Bergson's writings serve only to 
illustrate certain idiosyncrasies of his own special 
doctrine of instinct. Let us then turn to the pages 
of two text-books of psychology, written quite 
recently. Defining instincts as "all connexions or 
tendencies to connexion which are unlearned — are in 
us apart from training or experience," Dr. Thorndike 

1 "Creative Evolution," pp. 18, 31, 236, 283, 333. 

2 " Matter and Memory," p. 314. 



100 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

says l : — " The inborn constitution of a human being 
provides connexions between certain situations and 
the responses made to them." And after enumerating 
the attributes of instincts, he says : — " All the charac- 
teristics of instincts thus summarized belong to the 
subtler possibilities of mental life which are called 
capacities " ; and he proceeds to instance the capacity 
for managing men, and that for acting, or for literary 
production. Both instincts and capacities, then, are 
as such, dependent upon inborn constitution, and the 
distinction between them, if there be any valid 
distinction, would seem to lie in the fact that 
capacities are " the subtler possibilities of mental life " 
(p. 191). 

" If we try to work out a rough classification of 
instincts," says Dr. Titchener, 2 " we find at the lower 
end of the scale a number of movements that grade 
off into the reflex — such things as coughing, smiling, 
sneezing, swallowing, threading our way on the 
street, beating time to music. . . . These are definite 
responses to particular stimuli. At the upper end of 
the scale, we find large general tendencies: the 
tendency that makes us take the world of percep- 
tion as a world of real things ; the empathic tendency, 
that makes us humanize our surroundings, animate 
and inanimate alike ; the social tendency, that makes 
us imitative and credulous (" suggestible " in a 
narrower sense) ; the tendency to dual division, 
closely connected with the polar opposition of 
pleasantness-unpleasantness, which makes us classify 

1 Edward L. Thorndike, ? ' The Elements of Psychology " (2nd Ed. 
1907), p. 187. 

2 " Text Book of Psychology " (191 1), pp. 463-464. 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 101 

the world by pairs, good-bad, active-passive, etc. . , . 
Between these extremes lie what we may term the 
instincts proper : fear, love, jealousy, rivalry, curiosity, 
pugnacity, repulsion, self-abasement, self-assertion, 
and so on." We have thus a pretty wide range of 
instinctive tendencies (in the broader sense) from 
sneezing or coughing to classification in opposing or 
contrasted pairs; and even in the narrower sense, 
from fear and pugnacity, through jealousy and 
rivalry, to self-abasement and self-assertion. Dr. 
Titchener's classification comes to some extent 
into line with Dr. Thorndike's, if we correlate the 
" large general tendencies " of the former psychologist 
with the " inborn capacities " of the latter. In both 
there is a distinction between sundry "instincts 
proper " and sundry subtler hereditary possibilities of 
the mental life. 

Let us now revert to Mozart and the duckling. 
The one, in virtue of innate proclivities, responds in a 
special way to the stimulating touch of musical 
phrase and cadence, falling on a peculiarly sensitive 
ear and brain. The other, in virtue of innate 
tendencies, responds in a special way to the touch of 
water on limbs and breast. It is true that Mozart 
has to learn to give expression to the music that is 
in him, whereas the duckling has not to learn to give 
expression to the swimming that is latent in his 
nature as a water-bird to the manner born. Still, 
Mozart's learning is so remarkably rapid that it may 
fairly be urged that there is an innate facility. If, 
then, we are to apply the term instinctive to all that 
is unlearned — to all the factors of the mental life 
which are the outcome of congenital dispositions, as 



102 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

distinguished from the factors which are the outcome 
of acquired dispositions — there can be no question 
that Mozart took to music as instinctively as the 
duckling takes to water. That seems to have been 
Huxley's view. "The child," he says, 1 "who is 
impelled to draw as soon as it can hold a pencil ; the 
Mozart who breaks out into music as early ; the boy 
Bidder who worked out the most complicated sums 
without learning arithmetic ; the boy Pascal who 
evolved Euclid out of his own consciousness ; all 
these may be said to have been impelled by instinct 
as much as the beaver and the bee. And the man of 
genius is distinct in kind from the man of cleverness, 
by reason of the working within him of strong innate 
tendencies — which cultivation may improve, but 
which it can no more create than horticulture can 
make thistles bear figs." 

If, as Huxley says, in the paragraph preceding 
this passage, "hereditary mental tendencies may 
justly be called instincts," — and this is, as we have 
seen, in accordance with the usage of many writers — 
then, to define instinctive behaviour, as I have done, 
as the grouping term under which is comprised 
complex groups of co-ordinated responses which tend 
to the preservation of the race, and which charac- 
terize all the members of the same more or less 
restricted group of animals — such as chicks, neuter 
insects, and female finches — is, to say the least of it, 
hopelessly inadequate. 

I suppose it is pretty obvious that my definition 
is not meant to cover the facts presented by the early 

1 T. II. Huxley, "Hume" (1879), p. 113. "Collected Essays," 
vol. vi., p. 132. 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 103 

life of Mozart, Bidder, or Pascal. I suppose it is 
pretty obvious that I do not use the terms instinctive 
and innate as equivalent and interchangeable. In 
the use of terms, I advocate, while all that is 
instinctive is innate, there is much that is innate 
which is not instinctive. Instinctive behaviour is the 
outcome of the possession of congenital dispositions ; 
but there are congenital dispositions which determine 
other features of the mental life than the sequence of 
instinctive experience. Since we have two adjectives, 
instinctive and innate, I see no reason whatever for 
continuing to use them as synonymous. Why not 
reserve the narrower term instinctive for behaviour of 
a specific congenital type, dependent on purely bio- 
logical conditions, nowise guided by conscious 
experience, though affording data for the life of 
consciousness ? Why not use the broader term 
innate to include also those differentiations of con- 
genital capacity which, in man, show hereditary 
tendencies to artistic appreciation and expression, to 
mechanical invention, to scientific investigation and 
interpretation, to philosophic thought ; always 
granting (as I am prepared to grant) that these 
inherited tendencies exist ? Such an initial set of the 
mental life in a specific direction is of course just as 
characteristic of animal life as of human life. Closely 
connected with instinctive behaviour are what we 
may term the innate interests; for example, the 
racial interest of the cat in mousing, of the bird in 
nest-building, of the beaver in damming up streams, of 
nearly all female animals in the care of the young 
they have produced, and so forth. I am well aware 
that these are commonly regarded as typically 



164 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

instinctive. That they are intimately correlated with 
instinctive behaviour I freely acknowledge. That 
they are the outcome of congenital dispositions I do 
not for a moment deny. But they are not instinctive 
as I define the term. They are innate tendencies of 
the mental life in the development of which the 
instinctive consciousness, properly so called (in my 
terminology), is implicated. 

But why do I thus distinguish so sharply innate 
tendency from instinct ? Because I regard it as due 
to the congenital dispositions of the cortex. And 
this brings me back to the physiological side of my 
doctrine of instinct. My thesis is that, in its strictly 
biological aspect, instinctive behaviour is, as such, 
wholly due to congenital dispositions in the sub- 
cortical centres. I have given at length in the pre- 
ceding chapter the kind of physiological evidence on 
which I rely. But this instinctive behaviour of the 
ideally decerebrate animal — which is, I admit (out- 
side the physiological laboratory), a product of 
abstraction — in the intact animal also stirs the cortex. 
Here arises conscious experience of the presented 
situation and of the behaviour as taking place. But 
here also are at the same time initiated the cortical 
processes which accompany mental process. Now the 
cortex itself, like the sub -cortical brain, has its con- 
genital dispositions ; and these are the physiological 
basis of the innate mental tendencies, proclivities, 
faculties, and interests. These cortical processes are 
the correlates of hereditary modes of conative process. 
I do not myself apply the term conation to mental 
process which merely follows in the wake of instinctive 
procedure determined by purely biological hereditary 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 105 

dispositions of the sub-cortical centres. Perhaps we 
might here apply the term, quasi-conative, suggested 
by Dr. Stout l in a slightly different connexion. The 
point on which I wish to lay stress is that true cona- ' 
tion is always conditioned by anticipatory meaning 
— by a conscious relationship, and hence in my 
interpretation is always correlated with cortical 
dispositions. 

It will be remembered that in the second chapter 
I said that while I am ready to admit some vague 
pre-perception as associated with, or supplementary to, 
the instinctive consciousness, I am not prepared to 
admit that it forms part of the consciousness correlated 
with the instinctive situation as such. For granting 
the existence of such more or less vague and as yet 
undefined pre-perception, this is due, I believe, to 
hereditary dispositions within the cortex, and not to 
inherited connexions among the sub-cortical neurones 
which are the conditions of instinctive behaviour. 

I have been accustomed to regard all secondary 
meaning, in the psychological sense, as dependent 
on prior individually gained experience. The sight 
of a lady-bird acquires meaning for the chick through 
taking the insect into the bill. I have therefore 
spoken of meaning as of guiding value through the 
revival of past experience. But one should be ready 
to assimilate new ideas. Now Mr. McDougall, Dr. 
Stout and Dr. Myers suggest or accept the view that 
some measure of re-presentation precedes presenta- 
tion. Mr. McDougall gives expression to this view in 
a form which attributes no little definiteness to the 
anticipatory consciousness. The weaver-bird is 

1 " Manual of Psychology," Bk. II., ch. ii., § 3, p. 143. 



106 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

credited with an innate representation of the form of 
the nest it is going to build. Mr. McDougall holds 
that " there is no such fundamental difference between 
the dispositions that condition perception and re- 
presentation respectively, as to warrant us in drawing 
a rigid line between them, and in saying that, while 
dispositions subserving perception may be inherited, 
those subserving representation are not, or cannot 
be inherited." 1 But, if I mistake not, the inherited 
re-presentation is here regarded as something far 
more than the vague pre-perception in favour of 
which Dr. Stout argues. It approaches, if it does not 
reach the full stature of, a definite anticipatory image. 
I find insuperable difficulties in accepting the doctrine 
of innate ideas in this new form. 

But though I cannot come into line with Mr. Mc- 
Dougall's thought, I can go some way with Dr. Stout, 
especially if I am allowed to regard the pre-perceptive 
consciousness as assuming an affective rather than a 
cognitional form and as taking the guise of an undefined 
interest in what may come. In human life interest 
often diffuses itself forward in a form so indefinite 
that it is difficult to give expression to it in cognitive 
terms. We may not be aware in any clear fashion, 
in a sense scarcely aware at all, of what is coming ; 
and yet we may be keenly interested, partly because 
we don't yet know. Of course in human life this is 
a somewhat complex mental attitude. It implies a 
recognized gap in our knowledge, a gap that we want 
to be filled in, and to be filled in adequately. Still 
most of us, I suppose, are familiar with a less com- 
plex attitude, where we just expect some kind of 
1 "Brit, Journ. of Psych.," vol. iii., p. 251. 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 107 

satisfaction, though what form this satisfaction will take 
remains altogether indefinite. Still it has real value ; 
it leads us on and makes us persist in the behaviour 
through which the situation is further developed. 
May I accept Dr. Stout's teaching (I am always proud 
to learn from him) in some such form as this ? Putting 
the matter in my own way I ask : May we not assume 
that the very first time the moorhen is in the water, 
there is some form of cortical spread of physiological 
disturbance, determined by hereditary dispositions, 
which takes the conscious form of undefined pleasur- 
able interest conducing to persistence in the instinctive 
behaviour of swimming ? Since this would be a 
prospective conscious relationship, of real value as a 
condition furthering the instinctive act, it would be so 
far truly conative. May there not be an innate 
psycho-physiological tendency of cortical process to 
spread along hereditary lines parallel to the lines of 
spread in the biologically instinctive sub-cortical 
process ? If we speak of this as an incipient psycho- 
logical end, since the diffused pleasure is a conscious 
relationship of real conditioning value ; and if we look 
forward towards its further development ; may we not 
say that, broadly speaking, the conative or psycho- 
logical end, correlated with cortical process, is pleasure 
and satisfaction in living 'the racial life ; and that, 
broadly speaking, the biological end of the sub-cortical 
process is survival ? Thus should I explain the fact 
that there is a correlation between pleasure or satis- 
faction and those modes of instinctive behaviour 
which conduce to the preservation of the species. I 
should extend this even to details — of nest-building 
for example. To carry out this or that detail in 



108 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

racial fashion is supported by pleasure ; each de- 
parture from the routine of racial procedure is checked 
by the diffused pain which is closely correlated with 
cortical inhibition. Thus, through natural selection, 
there is established a consonance between innate 
mental tendencies and the congenital automatism of 
instinctive behaviour. In this connexion Mr. Mc- 
Dougall ! is right in contending that the establishment 
of this consonance must be accepted as evidence that 
" pleasure and pain are efficient causes of appetition 
and aversion " ; or, as I should prefer to phrase it, 
that the conscious relationship is a condition which 
really counts in the determination of behaviour and 
conduct. Whether this lends any support to a 
doctrine of animism, such as Mr. McDougall advocates, 
is a wholly different question. 

From what has already been said in this chapter 
it is sufficiently obvious that what I have spoken of 
as innate tendencies are just what some authors term 
instincts. Among these authors is Mr. McDougall, 
though he does not include under the term the 
more general innate tendencies included by Dr. 
Thorndike and Dr. Titchener. 

A salient feature of Mr. McDougall's treatment 
is the emphasis he lays on the very intimate and 
close connexion between instinct and emotion. 
" Each of the principal instincts," he says, 2 " con- 
ditions some one kind of emotional excitement 
whose quality is specific or peculiar to it ; and the 
emotional excitement of specific quality that is the 
affective aspect of the operation of any one of 

1 " Physiological Psychology," p. 160; " Body and Mind," p. 324. 

2 u An Introduction to Sucial Psychology " (1908), p. 47. 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 109 

the principal instincts may be called a primary 
emotion." I fully agree with Mr. McDougall that 
emotional tone accompanies the mental processes 
which are due to hereditary cortical dispositions. I 
think it probable however that emotional expression, 
and the visceral reflexes which have played so 
conspicuous a part in recent discussion, form part of 
the instinctive automatism, and are the outcome of 
hereditary dispositions in the basal ganglia of the 
brain. As Mr. McDougall notes (p. 33), "the 
evidence of this view has been greatly strengthened 
by the recent work of Pagano." I am, however, 
disposed to question whether the emotional experi- 
ence arises here. Its brain-correlates are probably 
cortical. This, I take it, is Dr. Pagano's opinion. 
But Mr. McDougall, as I understand him, regards 
the nervous activities in these sub-cortical ganglia as 
the correlates of the affective or emotional aspect or 
feature of the total psychical process. 

In any case "the human mind," says Mr. 
McDougall (pp. 19, 20), "has certain innate or 
inherited tendencies which are the essential springs 
or motive powers of all thought and action. . . . 
These all-important and relatively unchanging 
tendencies, which form the basis of human character 
and will, are of two classes : (1) The specific 
tendencies or instincts ; (2) The general or non- 
specific tendencies arising out of the constitution of 
the mind and the nature of mental process in general, 
when mind and mental process attain a certain 
degree of complexity in the course of evolution." 
" Instincts," he contends (p. 26), " are more than 
innate tendencies or dispositions to particular kinds 



110 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

of movement. There is every reason to believe that 
even the most purely instinctive action is the outcome 
of a distinctively mental process, one which is 
incapable of being described in purely mechanical 
terms, because it is a psycho-physical process, 
involving psychical as well as physical changes, and 
one which like every other mental process, has, and 
can only be fully described in terms of, the three 
aspects of all mental process — the cognitive, the 
affective, and the conative aspects ; that is to say 
every instance of instinctive behaviour involves a 
knowing of some thing or object, a feeling in 
regard to it, and a striving towards or away from that 
object." 

This passage serves well to bring out the wide 
divergence of our different interpretations of 
instinctive behaviour and instinctive experience. 
Not only does Mr. McDougall include (whereas I 
exclude) inherited mental tendencies, correlated 
with psycho-physiological dispositions and processes 
within the cortex ; he believes that the most purely 
instinctive action (including, I presume, such cases as 
that of my moorhen's dive) is the outcome of 
distinctively mental processes, involving cognition, 
affective tone, and conation ; whereas I believe that 
they are the outcome of distinctively biological 
processes, though they also afford primary data in 
experience. But the divergence really lies deeper. 
It will be noticed that Mr. McDougall says that the 
instinctive action cannot be described " in purely 
mechanical terms." What are we to understand by 
purely mechanical terms ? That we shall have to 
consider later. If we substitute the phrase "purely 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 111 

physiological terms," I believe that it is in these 
terms that instinctive behaviour, as such, is to be 
explained. But Mr. McDougall holds 1 that all 
bodily processes, especially those of growth and 
repair, and a fortiori, I presume, instinctive response, 
are not susceptible of what I should term purely 
physiological explanation. How then are they to be 
explained ? By the guiding agency of the soul. 
The explanation offered is animistic. For if " we 
deny to the soul or thinking principle all part in 
these bodily processes, we shall have to postulate 
some second and distinct teleological factor opera- 
tive in organisms. The principle of economy of 
hypothesis, therefore," in Mr. McDougall's opinion, 
"directs us to attempt to conceive that the soul 
may be operative in the guidance of bodily growth, 
either directly or by means of a general control 
exercised by it over some system of subordinate 
psychic agents." Of course if this is so, if even the 
growth of the embryo is subject to psychical 
control (p. 375), the observed behaviour of the spinal 
animal or of the decerebrate bird or mammal, is 
something more than co-ordinated reflex action ; it 
is a manifestation of " the soul or thinking principle." 
To this aspect of Mr. McDougall's thought we shall 
have to return in the sequel. For the present it 
suffices to draw attention to the relation of his 
doctrine of instinct to his doctrine of animism. 

The principal instincts of man, each of which is also 
a primary emotion, are, according to Mr. McDougall, 2 
seven in number : (i) the instinct of flight and the 
emotion of fear ; (2) the instinct of repulsion and the 

1 " Body and Mind," p. 373. 2 " Social Psychology." 



112 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

emotion of disgust ; (3) the instinct of curiosity and 
the emotion of wonder ; (4) the instinct of pugnacity 
and the emotion of anger ; (5) and (6) the instincts of 
self-abasement (or subjection) and of self-assertion 
(or self-display), and the emotions of subjection or 
elation (negative or positive self-feeling) ; (7) the 
parental instinct and tender emotion. These seven 
instincts "are those whose excitement yields the most 
definite of the primary emotions, and from these 
seven primary emotions together with the feelings of 
pleasure and pain (and perhaps also feelings of 
excitement and of depression) are compounded all, 
or almost all, the affective states that are popularly 
recognized as emotions, and for which common 
speech has definite names" (p. 81). To these may 
be added as of less importance the instinct of 
reproduction, the gregarious instinct, the instinct of 
acquisition, and that of construction. In the chapter 
on the general innate tendencies (p. 90), sympathy, 
suggestibility, imitation, play, habit, and the 
temperamental factors are discussed. 

I need not again emphasize the fact that Mr. 
McDougall and I use the terms instinct and instinc- 
tive with a difference of connotation. It will be 
more profitable to try and show how our differences 
of outlook are related. First with regard to the 
connexion between instinctive and emotional ex- 
perience. On the fact that there is an intimate 
connexion we both lay stress. I may be allowed 
here to recapitulate my own view of the matter. 
When a specific situation affords an appropriate 
constellation of stimuli, there issue reflexly from the 
sub-cortical centres two sets of efferent impulses, (1) 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 113 

those which evoke a specific mode of instinctive 
behaviour, including those motor responses which 
constitute much of the so-called emotional expression ; 
(2) those which evoke visceral disturbance — changes 
of heart-beat, and of the respiratory rhythm, 
modifications of the digestive and glandular functions, 1 
alterations in the peripheral vascular flow, a diffused 
influence on the general coenaesthesis and so forth. 
From all this complex of bodily changes under (1) 
and (2), afferent impulses come into the central 
nervous system, and, when they reach the cortex, 
qualify the experience of the presented situation and 
thus complete the instinctive experience with its 
accompanying emotional tone. I regard it as 
probable that, in its primary genesis, the emotional 
tone is in large measure correlated with cortical 
disturbance due to stimulation which is visceral and 
coenaesthetic in origin. If we look upon the James- 
Lange theory as one which is solely concerned with 
such primary genesis, there is much to be said in its 
favour. This may well be the way in which affective 
meaning is, in the first instance, acquired. But when 
once it has been thus acquired, when once associative 
connexions have been established, the emotional mean- 
ing, like the cognitive meaning which it qualifies, may 
be called up or revived, within a cortical disposition, 
before visceral impulses again come in to supplement 
and reinforce the emotional experiences in primary 
fashion. I take it, however, that in the absence of 
such reinforcement an emotion is so cold-blooded as 

1 The influence of those physiological products which are termed 
hormones on emotional tone is probably of very great importance. 
Cf. McDougall, pp. 117, 118. 
I 



114 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

to be scarcely worthy of the name. Such in outline 
is my account of the matter. 

In Mr. McDougall's interpretation "the innate 
psycho-physical disposition, which is an instinct, may 
be regarded as consisting of three corresponding 
parts, an afferent, a central, and a motor or efferent 
part, whose activities are the cognitive, the affective, 
and the conative features respectively of the total 
instinctive process." The afferent part is the 
presentation of the situation, the efferent part is the 
behaviour response, and such visceral innervation as 
may modify the working of the internal organs " in 
the manner required for the most effective execution 
of the instinctive action." Between these two lies 
the central part, the nervous activities of which " are 
the correlates of the affective or emotional aspect or 
feature of the total psychical process " (pp. 32-33). 
The emotional part is thus intercalated between the 
presentation and the behaviour and visceral response. 
" All the principal instincts of man are liable to 
modifications of their afferent and motor parts, while 
their central parts remain unchanged and determine 
the emotional tone of consciousness and the visceral 
changes characteristic of the excitement of the instinct" 
(p. 42). These quotations suffice, I think, to indicate 
that there is a wide divergence in our several 
interpretations. But I cannot dwell further on this 
aspect of the problem of instinct. 

When we come to the consideration of the 
primary innate tendencies — whether we take the major 
seven or add to these the minor four (one of which at 
least, the reproductive instinct, seems worthy of major 
rank) — I find it less easy to correlate our different 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 115 

views. No doubt the distinction which Mr. McDougall 
draws between the specific and the general innate 
tendencies may fairly be taken as that between the 
relatively specific and the relatively general ; though 
I am not sure that he would agree to this qualifica- 
tion, for his primary instincts seem to function as 
independent elements or agents. So far from regard- 
ing any one of them as a primary element, I regard 
each item on his list as denoting a class to which a 
group-name is attached — a class comprising varied 
modes of behaviour and modes of experience — a 
class within which these varied modes are grouped 
because they have certain features in common, and 
tend towards what we may term, in a very general 
way, the same end. Thus any one of his instinctive 
tendencies appears to me to emphasize what is 
similar in a number of rather varied experiences 
which are also characterized by much difference. I 
cannot say how many particular modes of instinctive 
behaviour and instinctive experience in my sense of 
the words would be comprised under the general 
heading of parental instinct — quite a considerable 
number. Though I should not for one moment think 
of denying that " self-assertion " and " subjection " 
involve, in each case, exceedingly complex congenital 
dispositions, sub-cortical and cortical ; and though I 
do not here feel disposed to question the convenience 
of these particular terms, under which to group 
antithetical bodily and mental tendencies that 
accompany the performance of many rather varied 
modes of behaviour ; none the less they appear to 
me rather to denote certain characteristics common 
to the experience that accompanies these or those 



116 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

modes of behaving, in this or that set of presented 
circumstances, than unitary principles that determine 
these experiences or these modes of behaviour. 

To put the matter in a different way I should 
regard the "seven" primary instincts as so many 
leading predicates we may make of the innate con- 
stitution of the organism regarded as the logical 
subject. Each predicate will of course be contingent 
upon the conditions. Thus we may say that the 
innate constitution of the organism is such that under 
these or those conditions he is pugnacious, curious, 
self-assertive, touched by tender emotion, and so 
forth. I find this point of view more helpful than 
the assignment of what may in each case be predi- 
cated to unitary principles or mental forces. 

But here we open up a fresh aspect of the whole 
matter. Instinct is for Mr. McDougall a determinant 
of activity. The instinctive mental process " results 
from " the excitement of an instinct (p. 46). " We 
may say, then, that directly or indirectly the instincts 
are the prime movers of all human activity ; by the 
conative or impulsive force of some instinct (or of 
some habit derived from an instinct) every train of 
thought ... is borne along towards its end, and 
every bodily activity is initiated and sustained. 
The instinctive impulses determine the ends of all 
activities and supply the driving power by which all 
mental activities are sustained. . . . These impulses 
are the mental forces that maintain and shape all the 
life of individuals and societies, and in them we are 
confronted with the central mystery of life and mind 
and will " (p. 44). 

Now we may, from my point of view, quite 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 117 

legitimately speak of behaviour or of mental process 
as "determined" by psycho-physiological disposi- 
tions, if by this we mean that, among the con- 
ditions under which bodily or mental process runs a 
particular course such dispositions must be taken 
into account. But what is a disposition ? Mr. 
McDougall says l that we ought to use the term 
an instinct to denote that feature of the innate consti- 
tution of any organism, that inherited disposition, 
in virtue of which the organism acts instinctively. 
Here innate constitution and inherited disposition 
are apparently regarded as equivalent. Are they 
quite equivalent? Is there not some ambiguity in 
the use of the word disposition ? I take it that, from 
the physiological point of view, a disposition is a 
configuration or a constellation of complexly-grouped 
neurones which, in virtue of its physiological rela- 
tionships and connexions, is the structural and 
functional condition of the flow of nervous process 
along certain channels. But should we not distin- 
guish between the disposition, as a configuration 
of neurones, and the constitution of, let us say, 
the cerebral cortex ? The constitutive elements of 
the nervous system are the neurones themselves, 
with their store of so-called potential energy ; the 
disposition is the manner in which these neurones 
are grouped and connected. Now this grouping 
and connexion as such, this configuration or constel- 
lation of neurones, this disposition of elements, has, 
I conceive, nothing whatever to do with the genera- 
tion of "impulsive force." The impulsive force, if 
we elect to use this phrase, is the energy implicate 
1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol Hi., p. 253. 



118 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

in the constitution of the neurones, of the nervous 
system, of the organism. All such " impulsive force n 
is, for the interpretation I accept, just part of the 
constitution of nature as a going concern. And 
since psychological relationships are themselves also 
part of the constitution of nature, therein lies the 
ground of mental process (as of all other process) 
as it runs its course, psycho-physiological dispositions 
being the conditions of certain modes of describable 
relationship. 

But on this view what becomes of impulse ? Let 
me lead up to an answer to this question by the 
prior consideration of another question. 

If we say that pugnacity makes the robin pug- 
nacious, or self-assertion makes the child self-assertive, 
or curiosity impels the monkey to pry into this and 
that, are we not in some danger of regarding each 
instinct as a faculty in terms of which the instinctive 
process may be explained ? We have such a way of 
making our general and abstract terms pose as so- 
called forces. Thus by many people gravitation 
is supposed to make bodies attract each other ; and 
crystallization to make sugar run into crystalline 
form. I am one of those who regard gravitation 
as a concept under which attractions of a certain 
order are i formulated ; crystallization as that which 
denotes certain modes of crystalline synthesis. So 
too I should regard pugnacity as the concept under 
which fall specific modes of behaviour and experience ; 
self-assertion as that under which may be grouped 
certain other modes of behaviour and experience, 
and so forth. All such concepts are merged within, 
and form related factors of, the more general concept 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 119 

of the constitution of nature. If then we are asked 
why, say, crystallization occurs under such and such 
conditions, all that we can reply is that the constitu- 
tion of nature is such that under these conditions 
it does occur. There's an end of the matter so far 
as science is concerned. The constitution of nature 
as the ground of crystallization (and of other processes) 
is just a concept we reach by a patient study of all 
the facts which are presented to observation. Of 
course such concepts refer to reality, real facts in real 
relationship. But crystallization does not make the 
facts to be what they are ; but the related facts being 
what they are (so far as we have learnt them) makes 
our concept of crystallization what it is. The con- 
stitution of nature, as a concept having reference to 
reality, summarises within our ideal construction a 
whole with closely interrelated parts. It does not 
make the facts : it is the facts as universal and not 
merely particular. So, too, pugnacity does not 
make the facts of behaviour and experience what 
they are; but these given facts related in certain 
ways are comprised under the concept of pugnacity. 
The constitution of the conscious organism does not 
make the facts of the conscious life ; but the totality 
of correlated facts is 'what forms the basis of our 
concept of that constitution. Instinct (or a com- 
mittee of instincts) is not something that, through 
impulsive force and motive power, drives bodily or 
mental processes towards their end ; it is a concept 
in terms of which we can, in some measure, interpret 
these processes as facts presented in nature. 

And so we get back to impulse. Impulse is not, 
I conceive, something which makes any process, 



120 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

strong or weak, to run its course, any more than 
crystallization impels the molecules of a crystal to 
enter into synthetic form — any more than force 
(for those whose usage I follow) makes physical 
motion to occur. Impulse is the name we give to a 
specific mode of experience which arises when bodily 
and mental processes are running their course. I do 
not question the reality of such a specific mode 
of experience. I provisionally accept feelings of 
"activity" in the sense of awareness of process in 
progress. The term impulse, like the physical term 
force, may conveniently be used to express, though 
with far less of mathematical precision, a measure of 
the mental process within a conscious configuration. 
On this understanding, since impulse denotes a felt 
measure of intensity, there can be no objection to 
speaking of the strength of an impulse, or, in the 
higher conceptual life, the strength of a motive. 
Indeed, on this understanding, I see no objection 
to speaking of impulsive power, or of motive force, 
so long as it is clearly realized that these expressions 
denote a measure of the intensity of processes which 
they take no share in producing. Of course, as I am 
well aware, it will be said that all this, with its 
analogies drawn from the inorganic sphere, implies 
a hopelessly mechanistic interpretation. So be it, 
if so it be. We shall discuss the concept of mechanism 
later on. For the present, I would only beg my 
critic to realize that such a mechanistic interpre- 
tation, if such it is, nowise disregards, nay insists 
on, the distinguishing importance of those con- 
scious relationships which count in any experiential 
situation every whit as much as the crystalline 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 121 

relationships count in an evaporating solution of 
alum. 

I take it that in what I have said I have altogether 
parted company from Mr. McDougall, whose doctrine 
of instinct and impulse has quite other implications. 
So that, after all, these comments, while they indicate, 
I trust, with sufficient clearness the nature of my 
own outlook, only serve to show the wide divergence 
in basal scientific conceptions between Mr. McDougall 
and me ; just as the earlier comments served to 
illustrate the distinction I should draw between the 
innate mental tendencies which he terms instincts, 
and the compound reflexes in automatic response to 
which, and to the accompanying experience, I restrict 
the term. Let us then without further quarrel over 
philosophical implications, or over technical designa- 
tion, take the innate tendencies. I should put the 
matter thus. There is, correlated with hereditary 
cortical dispositions, innate mental tendency to carry 
up into the sphere of educability all the essential life- 
processes which find their earliest expression in the 
automatism provided for by the sub-cortical disposi- 
tions. Among these are tendencies to exercise the 
locomotor apparatus and to go abroad in the world 
within a varying range ; to get the food in special 
relation to which the species has been evolved ; to 
mate and procreate its kind ; to foster and protect 
the young ; to associate with others in flocks or 
herds ; to imitate others ; to be self-assertive in one 
social situation, or submissive in another ; pug- 
naciously to hold his own, or timidly to escape from 
the dangerous by flight ; to pry into the strange and 
unusual ; to overcome obstacles and difficulties by 



122 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

persistent effort. The list might be almost indefinitely 
extended ; and within the list the inter-relationships 
are of the most varied kind, rendering the task of 
analysis very difficult. Just because we have passed 
from the relatively stereotyped responses of the 
automatic order, to the more plastic moulding of 
behaviour which educability implies, we find the 
closest integration within the sphere of innate mental 
tendency — an integration which justifies the use of 
the singular rather than the plural number. In his 
treatment of innate tendency Mr. McDougall has 
written much that is thoughtful, valuable, and stimu- 
lating. Where I find it most difficult to accept his 
doctrine is when he divides up the differentiated and 
integrated tendency into specific elementary con- 
stituents. I fully realize the extreme difficulty of 
the discussion of the emotions — I think I should 
prefer to say, emotion. Where so many have 
failed Mr. McDougall could hardly expect to be 
wholly successful. For the light he has shed on the 
subject we should be grateful. I for one tender him 
sincere thanks. But I believe that in attempting to 
build up what we call the more complex and richer 
human modes of emotion as compounds of this and 
that and the other primary emotion, he is on a false 
track. Instead of saying that reverence, for example, 
is a combination of so much wonder, plus so much 
fear, plus so much submission, plus so much tender 
feeling, I should prefer to deal with such an emotion 
in another fashion. I should prefer to make reverence 
the logical subject of which wonder and the rest may 
be predicated. That, I conceive, leaves to Mr. 
McDougall's treatment all the real value which it 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 123 

possesses. But I should regard these four predicates 
as very far from being exhaustive. With reverence 
or any other complex emotion I should feel that so 
much, so very much, depends on the context. I do 
not deny that in the case of emotional attitudes, 
as in the case of the cognitional attitudes we call 
concepts, we may in some measure treat them "in 
general," that is to say, use predicates which will 
be appropriate in any context. But I urge that of 
any emotion, as it has its being in life, or in the 
literature that deals with life, the particular context 
is all-important. To any student of the emotional 
life I should say : — Read Mr. McDougall's interesting 
discussion by all means ; and then take a chapter 
in some first-rate novel, where life at high tide is 
described, underline every emotional word, and pre- 
dicate of each all that you can, with all the contingent 
conditions in full view. 

The difficulty with the emotions is that they are 
modes of the inner life of experiencing. Directly 
we pass from the interpretation of experience in terms 
of what is presented or represented in or to that 
experience, and seek to elucidate the correlative 
aspect of experience, we are in a different region of 
psychological genesis — a region all its own, since here 
alone is there direct awareness of process as such. 
Here, as M. Bergson would say, we are in touch with 
life. Here the methods of intelligence and the 
intellect only help us in so far as they deal with 
symbolic substitutes for a reality which can only be 
felt or, as Dr. Alexander says, enjoyed. Here 
intuition (in M. Bergson's sense of the word) sheds a 
suffused light over parts of a continuum wherein 



124 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

there are no distinguishable boundary surfaces. Or 
rather, perhaps, the glow of mental life within a 
continuous process is the suffused light of intuition, 
is enjoyment. Here the methods dear to the associ- 
ationist cease to be applicable. Whatever may be 
said for the associationist doctrine from the point of 
view of what is experience/ — presented to experience 
in the form of impressions, percepts, concepts, and so 
forth — (and much may be said for it from this point 
of view) ; when we consider the process of 
experienczV/^, we have in place of juxtaposition what 
M. Bergson calls interpenetration. In the field of 
emotion, on its living side as a qualification of mental 
and vital process, we must, I conceive, put away from 
us all ideas of juxtaposition, compounding and 
algebraical summation, helpful, nay, essential, as these 
may be in the field of cognition, as dealing with the 
cognized. Here and throughout the so-called inner 
aspect of the mental life — the aspect of enjoyment — 
we have subtle differentiation of the process of 
experiencing which is only a phase of the ineradicably 
one and continuous process of living. Even the term 
differentiation savours of cognition and the intellect. 
Each succeeding phase of the mental life, as mental 
living, melts into and serves but to qualify the net 
synthetic result of all previous phases. Now, Mr. 
McDougall is a strenuous upholder of the unity and 
continuity of mental process. In his treatment of 
the emotions, however, he seems to follow too closely 
the methods of the associationists — where he speaks, 1 
for example, of admiration as a binary compound, of 
awe as a tertiary compound, and of reverence as a 

1 " Social Psychology," pp. 131, 132. 



HEREDITARY DISPOSITIONS 125 

blend of wonder, fear, gratitude, and negative self- 
feeling. The word blend may indeed indicate 
merging and interpenetration. But does not Mr. 
McDougall himself tell us * that " the consciousness 
of any individual is, or has, a unity of a unique kind 
. . . and that it cannot properly be regarded as 
consisting of elements, units, or atoms of conscious- 
ness put together or compounded in any way " ? 
What Mr. McDougall here says of the soul, I hold to 
be true of the unitary process of living, part of which 
involves the conscious relationships of experience. 
On these grounds I find some difficulty in accepting 
the doctrine that the complex life of emotion is com- 
pounded of any given number of so-called primary 
emotions as elements. 

But all this turns on the nature of one's concep- 
tion of experience. It has surely become evident 
that our interpretation of the moorhen's instinctive 
dive depends on our outlook towards the universe at 
large ! 

1 " Body and Mind," p. 283. 



CHAPTER V 

THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 

THE term experience is one of those which 
Wm. James, in his picturesque phraseology, 
called double-barrelled. It has, as Professor James 
Ward contends, a duality of reference. In one context 
it refers to that which is or may be experience/. In 
another context it refers to some phase in the process 
of experienczVzf. When Mr. Bradley says 1 that 
" sentient experience is reality, and what is not this 
is not real," the reference is in part to experience as 
that which is experienced. And when Professor Ward 
says 2 that "there is, for each, but one experience, 
his own ; and an experience that is not owned is a 
contradiction," the emphasis of his reference is to 
experience within the process of experiencing. 

Now, if all experience has this double reference 
(i) to that which is or may be experienced (say 
the world in which we live), and (2) to a process 
of experiencing (" owned " by " somebody "), the 
question arises whether we are to equate experience 
and existence. That in the absence of " somebody " 

1 F. H. Bradley, "Appearance and Reality," 2nd Ed. (1908), 
p. 144. 

2 James Ward, " Naturalism and Agnosticism," 2nd Ed. (1903), 
vol. ii., p. III. 

126 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 127 

" having " experience of the objects around him, they 
would not then and there be experienced is obvious 
enough. But that when they are not being experi- 
enced by him or by any mundane sentient being they 
are non-existent, — that their very existence depends 
upon their being experienced, — upon their entering 
into a conscious relationship — this is sheer assump- 
tion based on negative premisses. It may, no doubt, 
be said that it is also sheer assumption that they do 
exist when they are not being experienced. How 
are we to establish its validity save by that direct 
experience which is, by the conditions laid down, 
excluded ? Well, let us grant that we must e'en 
accept the one assumption or the other. I do not 
propose to discuss a very old problem. I merely 
wish to state that I proceed on the assumption that 
the existence of the world does not depend upon 
its being experienced. But granted that, on this 
assumption, objects exist and processes run their 
course in the world as actually or possibly experi- 
enced, the question may still be asked whether 
they are in themselves, in their essential being, 
independently of sensory perception, just exactly 
what they appear to be to us or to other sentient 
beings. That question does not concern us here. 
What does concern us is how they exist for actual or 
possible experience, and how this kind of existence 
may be interpreted. That is what science endea- 
vours to elucidate. 

I must not linger over the question at issue 
between realist and idealist. I may, however, devote 
a few more lines to an attempt to make my position 
quite clear — so far as that is possible within so 



128 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

brief a space. Take an ordinary bit of perceptual 
experience. I see and feel my pen. This involves 
experiencing and something experienced. Now of 
course it is open to us to call both mental. Then the 
properties of the pen in the experienced context are 
mental ; and the phases of experiencing it are mental. 
Both are of the conscious order. Thus Miss Calkins, 1 
speaking of the qualities and relations of things, 
says : — " You can give no unchallenged account of 
them except as distinctive ways of experiencing, that 
is, of being conscious." This may be true enough in 
& sense ; but it is somewhat confusing. Why not say 
that these are distinctive traits of the experienced, 
that is, of what we are conscious of in the experience 
we share with others? Now the world that I am 
conscious of in common with others, I term physical ; 
and the process of being conscious of it I term mental. 
I find this terminology more convenient than the 
application of the term mental to both. I seek then 
to elucidate the nature of relationships in the context 
of the physical or experienceable, and the relations 
which occurrences in that context bear to the process 
of experiencing. I do not dream of denying that the 
experienced and the experienceable imply actual or 
possible processes of experiencing. But I see no 
reason to accept the assertion that experienceable 
processes in the physical world cannot get along 
quite well, when there is no actual experiencing of 
them on the tapis. But, of course, however indepen- 
dent they may be in this sense, they are always 
dealt with in terms of the experienceable. These 

1 Mary Whiton Calkins, "Journal of Philosophy and Psychology," 
vol.viii., p. 458 (191 1). 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 129 

are the only terms in which we can deal with 
them. 

In the interpretation I have striven to set forth in 
earlier chapters — and we must note that it is an 
interpretation in conceptual terms — in this interpret- 
ation, instinctive experience is the concrete synthesis 
which is primarily given in the higher vertebrate. For 
though we can, in the analysis of thought, resolve it 
into yet simpler factors, yet this is an analysis of what 
is given as a synthetic whole — a synthetic whole that 
is from the outset (if an outset be ideally conceivable) 
changing, growing, developing. We must think it in 
cinematographical snap-shots, as M. Bergson would 
say — for concepts tend to assume a static form, and it 
is only by thinking along them and through them 
that we restore to them the moving progress of reality. 
But in the experience as lived by the organism it is 
nowise static, it is pulsing onwards. It has duration, 
in M. Bergson's sense of the term, within which there 
is correlated change and progress. In other words it 
is process. And as process it is synthetic. All process, 
at any rate all vital process, is synthetic ; that is part 
of the connotation of the term. An essential feature 
of the view I have tried to develop is that the 
synthetic process of experiencing is correlated with 
the synthetic process of living which is its natural 
precursor and which is here raised to a higher status. 
Its essential characteristic — that which differentiates 
it from the lower level of living — is that new relation- 
ships supervene — those relationships which we 
describe as conscious and especially pre-perceptive. 
Until the cortex is called into functional activity in 
any organism, these relationships, so far as that 



130 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

organism is concerned, are not yet in being. If then 
we analyse any ideally static phase of the instinctive 
experience, snap-shotted in conception, and if we 
reach certain factors therein, as factors in a moving 
whole which is then and there the experience, we shall 
utterly fail to understand the whole business so long 
as we persist in thinking only of the factors as asso- 
ciated, and wilfully lose sight of the synthetic nature 
of the process itself as associate #£*. 

We saw, however, that Prof. Ward contends that 
an experience that is not " owned " is a contradiction ; 
and I said above that in the absence of somebody 
having experience of the objects around him they 
would not then and there be experienced. What do 
we mean by somebody ? What do we mean by that 
somebody owning experience ? Of course, it will be 
said, we mean the subject ! Well, then, what do we 
mean by the subject ? Let us go back to our moor- 
hen swimming in the Yorkshire stream. I spoke 
of him as an experiencer having already a body of 
synthetic experience to which the new experience of 
diving was added in further synthesis. I endeavoured 
to trace the moorhen's experience backwards until 
he was hatched, I suggested that (apart from such 
experience as might have been gained within the egg- 
shell previous to hatching) the experiencing of the 
moorhen then and there had its beginning. Dr. 
Myers in criticism, 1 urged that my endeavour to get 
at the beginning of instinctive experience is vain 
because, according to his contention, there never can 
be a beginning of experience — a beginning which has 
no relation to previous experience. Does he mean 

1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 269. 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 131 

that there is no beginning of the process of experience, 
or no beginning of the products of experience ? We 
shall have a few words to say presently as to the 
relation of process to product. At present we may 
ask what evidence we have of process apart from its 
products, save in so far as we are directly aware of the 
process of experiencing which we ourselves enjoy — 
the one and only process of which we can be aware in 
this way. Let us, however, fix our attention on process. 
Does any process have a beginning ? I take it that 
for evolutionary treatment the answer must depend on 
the sense in which the question is asked. All natural 
processes are historically correlated. If then by 
having a beginning it is meant that there is no correla- 
tion whatever between the process in question and 
previous world-process, the answer must be : — No. 
In this sense no process has a beginning. But if the 
question is whether a series of phases of process and 
its products may, for scientific treatment, be isolated 
(of course relatively) and regarded as a whole, then 
the answer is surely : — Yes. In this sense any span 
of process which may be thus rounded off as a subject 
of inquiry (the life of my cat, for example, or the 
writing of this book) has a beginning — to be correlated 
with process outside the limits thus assigned. In this 
sense the experience of what we call the individual 
has a beginning and an end. As a subject of inquiry 
it is a logical subject — that subject being the process 
under consideration as a whole ; and as a subject a 
number of things may be predicted of it. The ex- 
perience of the individual is a span of synthetic 
process which, as synthetic, hangs together so as to 
form, for our interpretation, one logical subject, and 



132 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

any one of its predicates may be said to be owned by 
it or by that to which its concept has reference — by 
John Smith or by "somebody." That is what I 
understand by the subject — always a logical subject 
referring to a specific span of world process — nothing 
less and nothing more. Of course there is for each of 
us one specific bit of world-process of which we are 
aware and which we enjoy in a peculiar and unique 
manner, and to which we apply the term subject in a 
specially restricted sense. It is the logical ground of 
our own experience — our process of experiencing with 
all its experienced items. 

Now in instinctive experience, and even in the 
early and closely succeeding phases of perceptual 
experience, enriched by secondary meaning, the 
references to " eds " and " ing " (if I may be allowed 
this shorthand) are scarcely, if at all, differentiated 
from the common ground of experience in which 
both are implicit. The experience is just nafve 
living as a process involving conscious relationships 
which are acted on but not yet thought — the terms 
of which have not yet even incipiently been snap- 
shotted as concepts. That comes much later. And 
the difficulty of interpretation is that we must 
describe in conceptual terms that which is still in the 
pre-conceptual stage of natural development. We 
are forced to distinguish the situation with its 
stimulating objects in definite relation to the 
organism with its conscious relationships to the 
situation, the whole arbitrarily cut out from the 
total world-process in an insignificant corner of which 
they are a passing phase. How else can we proceed ? 
And yet the experience itself is just this little scrap 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 133 

of world-process suffused with awareness and not 
yet analyzed into those concepts we frame to aid us 
in our interpretation. 

And we too, as interpreters in relation to the 
problems to be elucidated, are also, each one of us, 
just an individualized and differentiated centre with- 
in the world process ; each one of us suffused with 
the higher awareness of systematic knowledge, in 
conscious relationship, not only to a set of facts as 
presented, but to the concepts man has framed and 
named for their completer mastery — capable in some 
measure of grasping the relationship of instinctive 
experience to the natural order within which it bears 
the relation of part to whole. 

What do I mean by speaking in such a connexion 
of a relation of part to whole ? Surely, it will be 
said, if by "whole" reference is intended to the 
order of nature and if by "part" reference is 
intended to conscious experience and knowledge, the 
two references are to radically different orders of 
existence — to the world we are conscious of, and to 
consciousness itself. This disparity is, it will be 
urged, fundamental. The problem of philosophy is 
to explain how these two utterly diverse existences 
come into relationship — not the relationship of part 
to whole within one order of existence ; nay, rather 
of this mind-order with that world-order. But the 
assumption on which I proceed is that there is, for 
scientific treatment, one order and only one. Within 
that order there are many and varied relationships — 
and among these relationships are those which we 
call experiential or conscious. One thing is certain 
and involves no assumption ; that the conscious 



134 INSTINCT AND EXrERIENCE 

processes of which we are aware in ourselves and 
which we enjoy, are in relation to processes outside 
us which we cannot enjoy in the same sense, since 
they are not constituent parts of our own life- 
process. They may or may not have their own 
enjoyment ; but that we cannot directly share. 
Herein lies the cardinal distinction which has been 
misinterpreted as implying two different orders of 
being ; the distinction between a privileged world- 
process which is suffused with awareness and enjoy- 
ment, the flow and change of which is felt from 
within, and other world-processes or their products 
which can only be known and contemplated as they 
affect this privileged process from without. Why 
there should be, within the constitution of nature, 
privileged processes having this character of enjoy- 
ment is not a question to which science can give any 
reply. Science cannot tell us why there are chemical, 
or physical, gravitative or crystalline processes. 
Science just accepts the world as it finds it ; and 
unquestionably among its findings are those relation- 
ships which we term conscious. The fact of 
experience testifies to their existence — whether we 
regard them as part of the constitution of one order 
of nature, or assume the existence of two orders of 
being. The former is the interpretation I seek to 
develop. Fully admitting that in experience we live 
and have our mental being ; fully realizing that on 
experience all our knowledge is founded : I urge 
that the ground of experience is the constitution of 
nature, within privileged centres of which a privileged 
process is polarized into experience and the 
experience. 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 135 

If then we can accept this distinction between 
the " eds " and " ing " of experience as cardinal with- 
in the conscious relationship as such ; if we can 
accept the implication that there can be no " ed " in 
individual experience without its correlative "ing" 
(though there may be " ing " without clearly 
differentiated " eds " ) ; and if we allow the assump- 
tion that within the world to which the " eds " 
refer there are other relationships independent of 
individual experience ; we are in a position to follow 
up this method of interpretation. But a subtle 
question here arises. What are the limits of the 
mental ? Are the " eds " as such within the mind ? 
It is a matter of definition. If the mind is essentially 
experiencing process, then what is experienced is, in 
a sense, always outside the mind — is it that with 
which experiencing is in relation ! Within the field 
of sensory perception the sens^, as I urged above, 
is non-mental ; it is what we call physical in 
its reference. In "a series of masterly addresses 
to the Aristotelian Society (1908-11) Professor 
Alexander has contended that we ought to regard 
as non-mental not only the sensa but the cognita, — 
not only the objects of perception, but the objects of 
thought and imagination. The trouble is that we 
thus apply the term non-mental to the characteristic 
products of mental process ! None the less the 
distinction Professor Alexander has in view is a 
really valid one, and is in line with that which M. 
Bergson is never tired of drawing. That distinction 
is the one I have drawn above, between what is 
experienced or thought, and the process of experienc- 
ing or thinking ; it is the distinction between what is 



136 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

minded, and minding. Now minding is, for Professor 
Alexander, the essential feature of that conation 
which is, for him, mental process, and which affords 
the true subject-matter of psychology. Hence, for 
him the minded, as such, is non-mental. Will it not, 
however, suffice for our purposes to hold fast to the 
cardinal distinction ; to lay stress on the fact that the 
order of nature, as conceived and thought, is dealt 
with in a context distinguishable from that of the 
process of conceiving and thinking it ; and to leave 
in abeyance the rather technical question whether 
concepta should be termed mental or non-mental. 

Sir J. J. Thomson has said that the man of science 
deals with policies rather than with creeds. No 
doubt one must so far believe in one's policy as to 
proceed with some confidence along the course which 
it indicates. Still it lacks that element of finality 
which the word creed implies. As a policy, then, I 
accept one order of nature and one science of 
phenomena ; as a policy I accept as independent of 
individual experience the natural processes to which 
our perceptual experience and our systematic know- 
ledge refers ; as a policy I regard the conscious 
relationship as a natural relationship to be correlated 
with others within the constitution of nature; as a 
policy I accept the cardinal distinction between the 
" eds " and the " ing " within the privileged process 
which is, for scientific treatment, my mental life ; 
and as a policy I exclude from science, as I define 
it, the metaphysics of Source. 

By Source (which I shall write with a capital letter 
merely to distinguish it as a metaphysical conception), 
by Source, often spoken of as Cause, I mean some 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 137 

Agency outside or underlying process which calls 
process into being or directs its course. The Platonic 
Ideas, in the commonly current acceptation, Berkeley's 
Eternal Spirit, Kant's Transcendental Ego, Schopen- 
hauer's Will, Dr. Driesch's Entelechy, M. Bergson's 
Life, the animist's Soul, the Subject of many 
psychologists and the Force of many physicists, all 
involve the metaphysical concept of Source, which 
refers to some (often extra-mundane) Power, of the 
Activity of which process is a manifestation — some 
Reality of which the world of science is the 
phenomenal expression. Thus for T. H. Green an 
Eternal Consciousness is necessary for the very 
existence of an order of phenomena. " He tells us," 
as Henry Sidgwick puts it, 1 " that it is a * source ' 
of the relations which constitute nature ; that they 
' result from ' its combining and unifying action ; 
that it ' makes the animal organism its vehicle ' ; 
that it is Operative' throughout the succession of 
events which constitute the growth of the individual 
mind ; that it ' acts on the sentient life of the soul/ 
and * uses it ' as its organ." Now all such reference 
to Source or Agency does not here concern us. 
We may ask, with Sidgwick, 2 what, for scientific 
interpretation > "is the further gain to knowledge in 
referring the unity and system to a unifying 
principle as its source, if that principle is to have 
no other character except what it gives itself in its 
unifying action " ; or again more briefly :— " Why do 
the relations want a Source ? Why cannot they 

1 Henry Sidgwick, " Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant " (1905), 
p. 261. Cf. T. H. Green, " Prolegomena to Ethics," §§ 67-73. 

2 Op. cit., pp. 263 and 226. 



138 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

get on without one ? " Although myself a believer 
in Source, I hold that this concept should be 
rigidly excluded from the scientific universe of 
discourse. I too ask : — Why should we not 
endeavour to interpret the constitution of nature just 
as we find it somehow presented to our experience ? 
That I conceive is the task of science, which should 
leave severely alone, as beyond its province, all forms 
of the metaphysics of Source, all reference to extra- 
mundane Agency. To modify Hume's oft-quoted 
words, "the scenes of the universe are constantly 
shifting, and one object follows another in an 
uninterrupted succession ; but the Power or Force 
which actuates the whole machine is entirely" — 
outside the field of scientific inquiry. No doubt any 
limitation of this field of inquiry is a matter of 
arbitrary definition. That is just why I wish to make 
perfectly clear where I, for one, in discussing this 
subject, decide to draw the line. 

A few more words may serve to render less 
obscure my reasons for excluding the concept of 
Source from what I regard as the province of science. 
Let us suppose that Life is the Source or Cause of 
organic processes and products. Now according to 
the old scholastic adage, Causa aequat effectum. If 
Cause is the Giver and process the given then, as 
James put it, Nemo dat quod non habet. But the 
Cause may have, and traditionally has, more than 
it actually gives — eminenter as Descartes would say. 
Life when it organized the carboniferous flora and 
fauna possessed "eminently" the further power of 
organizing the plant and animal world of to-day. Now 
if the given in any process at any time contains just 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 139 

what the Giver then gives, have we not in this given 
all that science has any concern with ? What need 
have we, in science, of Source or Cause or Giver, if 
life-processes and life-products are all that we are 
acquainted with as given ? 

But it is not only that we are calling in a concept 
which is unnecessary for science. We are so apt to 
make the Source to which that concept refers do duty 
which poses as scientific business. When we get to 
a difficulty, instead of confessing ignorance and 
striving to remove it by scientific method, we say : — 
" Oh ! that can only be explained by reference to 
Source" — which, to put it bluntly, is a roundabout 
way of expressing, without confessing, scientific 
ignorance. Furthermore, there is an almost 
ineradicable tendency to endow Source with a false 
and meretricious simplicity. The Life that organizes 
is supposed to have a simplicity analogous to that 
which is attributed to the mind of the captain of an 
ironclad, who deals in his conning-tower with all the 
multiplicity of the ship's intricate mechanism. But 
to every mechanical detail, just in so far as it is 
known to the captain, there is what Professor 
Alexander would term the " non-mental " which is in 
the field of his contemplation — that which is 
cognized, imagined, and so forth. And though the 
unity of process should never be lost sight of, yet 
within that unity, merging and interpenetrating, 
there is a complexity strictly correlative to the 
complexity of the " eds " with which it deals. It is 
just because this complexity in large measure defies 
analysis (for process itself can only be analysed in 
reference to its products) that we are bidden to 



140 INSTINCT AND EXrERIENCE 

attribute it to a Source which out of its utter 
simplicity, falsely conceived, can produce any 
required amount of complexity — that is, in effect, 
just that amount which is actually found. What is 
thus given is process and products, or process/^* and 
the process^; it is the business of science to deal 
with them in terms of correlation. But the 
metaphysics of Source has a perfect right to say : 
Just as in the given there is the processed and the 
correlative processing ; so to the given there is the 
correlative giving by Source. 

The Source of phenomena being thus excluded 
from our limited field of inquiry, what shall be our 
definition of cause? I give none, because, though 
I have used the word above in one of its senses, I 
propose, so far as is possible, to avoid the use of this 
very ambiguous term, endeavouring to make clear 
the sense in which I do use it, should occasion arise. 
Instead of employing this term here I shall speak of 
any given process on which our attention is fixed, as 
correlated with other processes ; or of an earlier 
phase of any given process as correlated with the 
later phases. I shall assume that ubiquitous corre- 
lations hold good within the constitution of nature, 
and that patient scientific research may lead to their 
discovery. I shall, however, also use the word con- 
ditions for the relevant circumstances under which a 
process runs its course — it being understood that 
these conditions afford data for correlation. We may 
thus speak of the conditions under which the synthesis 
of a chemical compound, say carbon disulphide, 
occurs ; or the conditions under which the develop- 
ment of a hen's tgg takes place ; or the conditions 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 141 

under which I write this paragraph. In each case 
we fix our attention on a current process reached 
through its products, and describe other processes 
related to it as conditions. But with the shifting of 
our attention the same process may be regarded now 
as conditioning and now as conditioned. Thus, to 
take an example from daily life, the state of the fire 
in my grate may be the condition of a certain mode 
of my experience ; this may be the condition of my 
poking the fire ; this again the condition of a freer 
and fuller process of combustion ; and this of a 
satisfactory modification of my experience. I give 
this illustration to show first how the focus of our 
attention shifts from one to the other of correlated 
processes, each of which in turn is made the subject 
of certain predicates ; and secondly, to emphasize 
the fact that conscious processes really count as con- 
ditions of change in other world-processes with which 
they are themselves in relation. 

But how about the conditions within the process 
itself? Of course an earlier phase of process may 
be regarded as the condition of a later phase of the 
same process. But if we have in mind the process 
itself as a whole ! Then it seems to me that we 
ought not, in that context, to use the word conditions. 
Of process itself as existent it is futile (in science) 
to seek for the conditions of its very existence. We 
can only find such conditions in the realm of Source, 
and that realm is closed to us here by a self-denying 
ordinance. Take the world-process as a whole. If 
we are asked what are the conditions of its existence, 
we must reply : There are none ; for conditions imply 
that there are other processes with which this process 



142 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

may be correlated ! Of course if, with M. Bergson, 
we accept the conception of two orders of being — the 
one comprising all processes of the inert or the auto- 
matic type, the other all processes of the vital or 
conscious type — then, clearly, those of the one may 
be regarded as affording conditions to be correlated 
with those of the other. But we have at present no 
concern with this conception. Accepting provisionally 
one order — the world process with all its relationships 
— we cannot speak of the conditions of its existence 
within our universe of discourse. 

But we do seem to need — if only for convenience 
of description — a term which shall enable us to refer 
the correlated phases within a given process to the 
process as a whole. To this end I shall use the term 
ground. The ultimate ground of all natural occur- 
rences is, for science, the constitution of nature. In 
any changing configuration the ground of the change 
is the nature of the constitution of that configuration 
— gravitational in the solar system, chemical when 
carbon disulphide is formed, and so forth. On the 
constitutive nature, as ground, will depend, in any 
given natural system, the character and value of the 
changes which are observable therein. On the consti- 
tutive nature of the hen's egg will depend the character 
and course of its development. The living organism 
is thus the ground of the organic processes which 
run their course under normal conditions in correla- 
tion with other processes. We shall, I think, find this 
term useful when we have to ask with regard to some 
suggested " principle " — with regard to entelechy for 
example : — Is it suggested with reference to Source, 
or is it suggested with reference to ground ? 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 143 

Let us take as a concrete case the formation of a 
crystal in an appropriate solution. I select the 
crystal as an example of what I understand by a 
synthetic product in the realm of the inorganic. 
Now the man of science explains the formation of 
the crystal by describing all the relevant antecedent 
and accompanying conditions which may be observed 
or inferred from the fullest and most minute study 
of all the phenomena concerned and nothing but the 
relevant phenomena ; and by referring the particular 
case to the type of synthesis — crystallization to wit — 
under which it is entered in the day-book of science. 
The explanation here given is expressed first in terms 
of correlated conditions, and secondly in terms of 
ground. On this understanding there can be no 
reasonable objection to speaking of crystallization 
as the ground of the formation of crystallized 
products. It just refers particular occurrences to 
that phase of the world-process which they exemplify. 
But what do we mean by products, and what is their 
relation to process ? Rather a difficult question. 
Only a suggestion of the direction in which an 
answer may be sought, and perhaps found, can be 
given. Are not products just bits of frozen world-pro- 
cess which are rendered stable and static for perception 
and conception ? Why such congealing of fragments 
of process, the parts of which hang together as a 
relatively independent whole, should take place, we 
do not know. It may be that the seeming stability 
is only a phase of process itself: that the rigidity 
of products is like that of the gyroscope. Is it not 
to such a doctrine that modern theories of the atom, 
purely schematic and conceptual as they are, lead 



144 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

up? "Call it process, or call it product, all is 
process." This seems to express the tendency of 
contemporary scientific thought. Still for practical 
purposes of interpretation we must distinguish 
between product and process. May we not say that 
the product is that which is process^; and that, as 
M. Bergson urges, such products lie strewn along the 
course of the ever-fluent stream of process/^- ? Why 
this should be we know not ; that is nature's way. 

Incidental reference may here be made to the old 
problem of "the one and the many" — a problem 
which Wm. James revived in his brilliant and 
picturesque advocacy of a pluralistic universe. I 
cannot, of course, discuss so large a question 
parenthetically. But may it not be suggested that 
the world of products strewn along the course of 
process, frozen into seeming rigidity, inevitably tends 
to assume a radically pluralistic guise ; and yet that, 
none the less, the world process of which these widely 
scattered products are the outcome, is one and con- 
tinuous ; and that our conceptual scheme (which we 
believe refers to an existent constitution of nature) 
reaches its ideal limit in a completely monistic inter- 
pretation ? James advocated a doctrine of discon- 
tinuity. Perception (the perceived) itself comes in 
pulses, as the threshold is surpassed. "On the 
discontinuity theory," said James, 1 "time change, 
etc., would grow by finite buds or drops, either 
nothing coming at all, or certain units of amount 
bursting into being 'at a stroke.*" But had he not 
in view the discontinuity of products ? That discon- 
tinuity cannot be denied, and should not be neglected. 

1 M Some Problems of Philosophy," p. 154. 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 145 

But does this show that process is discontinuous ? 
May we not say that just as the sensibly continuous 
flow of water through a narrow pipe breaks into 
separate drops beyond the orifice, so does continuous 
world-process break up into the relatively discon- 
tinuous process -systems which we call products ? 
Why this should be we know not. But thus we may 
have a pluralism of products and yet a monistic 
interpretation of process. But what do I mean by 
a monistic interpretation ? Do I mean an interpreta- 
tion which leads to an absolute unity of pure being 
in which all shades of difference are annulled ? That 
is certainly not what I have in mind. That seems 
to me a philosophical conception with which we have 
here no concern. What then do I mean by a monistic 
interpretation ? I mean one in terms of correlations 
so complete that all the multifarious happenings in 
the universe, in all their rich and varied multiplicity, 
are conceived as integral parts of one developing 
world-story ; so that one could pass in thought from 
any given phase of process to any other phase of 
process along definitely describable correlation-routes. 
This is the monistic " unity of concatenation " which, 
as I understand him, even the pluralistic James was 
prepared to accept (p. 129) at any rate in retrospective 
reference. 

But is the unity in the interpretation or in that 
which is interpreted ? Another ancient problem ! 
The old writers sought to find and to express the 
relation of the realm of perceptual fact to the sphere 
of conceptual thought. Where, they asked, is the 
home of universals ; in the one or in the other ? In 
their scholastic phraseology there were, they said, 



146 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

three alternatives : (i) Universalia ante rem ; (2) 
Universalia post rem ; (3) Universalia in re. Now 
the first formula involves the conception of Source, 
and leads to the Platonic Ideas (as currently inter- 
preted) to the world-plan of the Eternal Spirit, and 
the like. That conception lies beyond our province 
here. The second position is that of radical empiri- 
cism. The conceptual scheme is the outcome of 
man's thought concerning the phenomena presented 
in perceptual detail. So long as we are dealing 
with the development of human knowledge, I accept 
this without reservation. First the facts, then the 
interpretation. None the less do I accept also the 
third of the three scholastic formulas, in the sense 
that the order which we express in general terms 
is in the constitution of nature. It is there for us 
to discover if we can, though our discovery of it may 
need the patient observation of many facts. Of 
course it is not there as a number of propositions ; 
it is, however, there as that to which these propositions 
have reference. A given synthetic process is not 
there in the form, of a concept ; but it is there ready 
to be named and formulated. It is there in a form 
that is universal just in so far as we rightly predicate 
universality of it. 

The res is the perceptual country in which we 
live : the universalia of thought are the maps which 
we make of that country. Obviously the maps 
cannot possibly reproduce all the details of the 
country. If they could it would utterly spoil their 
utility as maps. They signify some of the deeper 
meaning of the country. The use of a map is to 
enable us to find our way in the country, to emphasize 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 147 

essential relationships, to reduce the scale of the 
real to compassable limits, and to help us better 
to understand the country as we learn to read the 
maps. The omission of detail is absolutely essential 
to the value of a map for these purposes. But though 
tens of thousands of details are, and must be, 
excluded, none of these details must be such as to 
invalidate any of the teachings of the map. That is 
fatal. The map is no good if it is inconsistent with 
the country's facts. Leave out as much as may 
conduce to the end in view ; but insert nothing 
which conflicts with detailed observation. But maps 
may be made and used for different purposes, so as 
to aid us to interpret the country in different ways — a 
political map, a road map, a railway map, a geological 
map, and so forth. Each must significantly represent 
the facts it is meant to summarize ; each must be 
consistent within itself; each must be consistent 
with the other maps so far as their data coin- 
cide. Each is of use to enable us to find our 
way in the map, and to find our way in the country 
mapped. More detailed acquaintance with the 
country helps us to make a better map ; a better 
map helps us to become more closely acquainted 
with the country ; and so on, to and fro, up to the 
ideal limits of acquaintance with and knowledge 
of reality. Such maps are our ideal constructions 
in science. Physics makes its map ; physiology its 
map; psychology its map, and so on. Each map 
leaves out certain features of perceptual reality ; none 
can put in more than a certain amount of detail ; there 
must be no contradiction between the several maps 
so far as the facts to which they refer are the same. 



148 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

Every mapped out ideal construction is useful so far as 
it enables thought to move securely within its scheme, 
and affords a reliable guide in that which the scheme 
significantly interprets — the perceptual world with 
its bewildering multiplicity of particular and concrete 
detail. And just in so far as they are useful for these 
purposes, we may say that the maps are true — true 
in their self-consistency, true in their consistency 
with other maps, true to the perceptual experience 
from which they are derived, true to the constitution 
of nature in which that experience is grounded. 

The ideal monistic interpretation of nature is, 
then, a highly generalized map of the moving and 
developing world-process wherein all the correlation 
routes are serviceable for conceptual thought, and 
serviceable for the interpretation of observable 
processes and products. Now suppose, if the supposi- 
tion be not too extravagant, that we had reached this 
ideal. Suppose that we were in possession of an 
adequately complete knowledge-map of world-process 
and world -products up to date. Could we with like 
adequate completeness foretell the future ? Let us 
narrow down the question. Let us suppose ourselves 
to be sentient beings living in the fire-mist at an 
evolutionary period before crystallization occurred 
in what is now our solar system. Could we then, 
on the basis of the fullest possible experience of our 
fire-mist world, foretell the forms that crystalline 
synthesis would assume in the not-yet of the future ? 
I think not. How could we describe and formulate 
facts the like of which were not yet in being for our 
experience ? It may be said that science is day by 
day foretelling facts which are not yet in being. 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 149 

Yes ! But does science ever foretell facts the like of 
which have not yet swum into the ken of experience ? 
I speak under correction ; but I believe not. I hold 
that all scientific explanation is after the event, 
and that all scientific prediction is of like events 
under like conditions. But surely, it may be urged, 
an adequate knowledge of the constitution of nature 
would enable us to predict any event no matter how 
novel or how far removed from us in future time. 
In a sense this is true enough — but only in the sense 
that the supposed adequate knowledge embraces the 
constitution of nature when it is finished — if it ever 
gets finished for human understanding to grasp. In 
the case I have supposed, the order of nature as an 
evolutionary product was still in the making and had 
not reached the critical moment of crystallization. 
In our interpretation of the evolutionary process, 
if we place ourselves at any moment in the midst of 
its flow, we anticipate the future on the basis of the 
experience gained up to date. But even if that 
experience were exhaustive, our anticipations must 
often be at fault if the world is still in the making 
for our experience, if new modes of synthesis 
hitherto unexperienced, and, therefore, as I con- 
ceive unpredictable, 1 come into being. I am, how- 
ever, fully aware of the fact that many men of 
science would contend that the evolution of all 
the varieties of crystal-form, and all the corre- 
lated physical properties, could have been fore- 
told, before their actual existence, on the basis of 

1 M. Bergson, as I think unwarrantably, restricts the range of the 
unpredictable to the vital order ; but it must be remembered that for 
him all process is, in a wide sense, vital. 



150 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

an adequate knowledge of molecular polarities. But 
as a matter of historical fact, is not our knowledge of 
these molecular polarities derived from the study of 
crystals and their properties ? Given specific modes 
of synthesis, we set to work to explain them in terms 
of what we find therein. But that is a different 
matter from predicting the modes of synthesis before 
they are given ! 

Is such a view proved to be incorrect by the 
prediction of the discovery of Neptune based on the 
skilled and laborious calculations of Adams and 
Leverrier — a prediction, the accuracy of which was 
established when the new planet swam into the field 
of M. Galle's telescope ; or by the prediction of the 
physical properties of certain chemical elements, the 
discovery of which might be anticipated on the basis 
of Mendeleefs law? Surely not. Reduced to its 
simplest expression, what we have in such cases is 
a curve of ideal construction within which certain 
points may be ideally interpolated before those points 
have been shown by observation to exist on nature's 
curve of fact. But the curve of ideal construction is 
based on experiments and observations up to date ; 
and these deal with occurrences up to date. But if 
the phenomena of crystallization had not occurred up 
to date, on what basis could a curve of ideal con- 
struction, dealing with the not-yets of the natural 
order, be founded ? How could points be inter- 
polated or extrapolated in a curve for the drawing 
of which nature had not yet supplied the data ? 

But enough of the inorganic order. Crystalliza- 
tion has been taken merely as an example. Chemical 
synthesis might have been treated on similar lines. 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 151 

It might have been asked whether the constitution 
and properties of carbon disulphide could have been 
predicted before the event of its coming into being, 
and before like events had afforded analogical data. 
The point of my contention is that the progress of 
inorganic evolution is replete with events which are 
unforseeable on the basis of the fullest possible 
experience prior to the actual occurrence of such 
events. All that we can do, in science, is to correlate 
the new with the old. 

Carrying with us the lesson we have learnt from 
the inorganic world, let us pass onwards to the 
sphere of the organic. Let us again ask a question : — 
Could our supposed sentient being (Irish, I admit, in 
the figure of prolepsis), existent before life (as the 
man of science regards life) appeared on the surface 
of this planet — could this impossible being have 
possibly foretold the nature of organic processes ? 
His descendant, speaking in Belfast, 1 no doubt 
discerned " in that matter which we, in our ignorance 
of its latent powers . . . have hitherto covered with 
opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial 
life." But Tyndall was speaking after the event; 
and I doubt whether even the champion of biogenesis 
could have foretold the properties of protoplasm 
before that elusive substance had come into exist- 
ence. Now it is in being, we can gain experience of 
these properties, though we cannot as yet correlate 
the genetic stages of its natural evolution. That 
is just part of our scientific ignorance. Some of 
the properties of living organisms are, however, 

1 John Tyndall, "Address to the British Association" (1874). 
11 Fragments of Science," 6th Ed. (1879), vol, ii., p. 193. 



152 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

unquestionably, as I believe, different from the 
properties of inorganic substances. New relationships 
as a matter of observation obtain. I do not care, at 
this stage of our inquiry, to have much traffic with 
" isms ". But if the term mechanism be employed as 
a group-name by which to label certain salient 
characteristics of physical and chemical processes in 
the inorganic world, and the same processes in so far as 
they occur in organisms, there would seem to be no 
objection to the application of the term vitalism to 
the salient characteristics of the specifically physio- 
logical processes which differentiate the organism 
from inorganic matter. But obviously the two terms 
should be used on a similar footing, that is to say, to 
label the observed characteristics and to aid us in our 
classification and our scientific interpretation. Un- 
fortunately, however, the word vitalism generally 
carries with it another and a different connotation. 
Inasmuch as any suggested interpretation of instinct 
is sure to be termed mechanistic or vitalistic, and 
inasmuch as one's attitude towards the instinctive 
problem is closely related to one's attitude towards 
vital problems generally, I must endeavour to make 
clear my own point of view. 

First as to vital force. This opens up the ques- 
tion. What are we to understand by force ? Given 
certain observable changes of position in the solar 
system ; is force the Source of these motions ? That 
question is beyond our province. We have excluded 
Source from our universe of discourse ; and we must 
therefore have nothing to do with either gravitative 
or vital Force in that sense of the word. Then we 
may speak of force as a measure of the accelerations 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 153 

which occur in a mechanical system. But we 
know little or nothing about the accelerations of 
particles in an organic system ; so that can scarcely 
be the meaning we are to attach to vital force. We 
may, however, speak of the solar system, for example, 
as one in which the changes which occur are to be 
interpreted in terms of gravitative force, meaning 
thereby that the system is a gravitative system. The 
term gravitative force here has reference to the 
constitution of the system as the ground of certain 
observed occurrences. It names the order of relation- 
ships with which we have to deal. If the term vital 
force is used in an analogous manner, and if we are 
careful to make this quite clear in our definition, I 
see no reason why we should reject this usage. The 
only serious objection is that it is apt to suggest 
Source, and not what I have called ground. I 
should, myself, therefore, much prefer to speak of 
organic constitution or organic relationships. But 
still, since we speak of crystalline, magnetic, and 
chemical forces as characterizing certain natural 
processes, using this form of speech to describe the 
constitution of the system in each case, I see no 
objection to speaking in like manner of vital force, as 
characterizing organic processes as such, so long as it 
is distinctly understood that this is just what is 
meant, and that there is no implication of Life as 
Source. If this implication be intended, let it be 
clearly stated, then we shall know exactly where we 
are. 

What then about vital chemistry ? Vital or 
physiological chemistry is either a branch of chemistry 
or it is not. If it be not, then the sooner some other 



154 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

name is found for it the better. If it is, then, surely, 
as a branch, it is still intimately correlated with other 
branches of the parent stem from which it is 
differentiated, and as such must be dealt with in 
terms of chemical processes and chemical products. 
But, it will be said, this way of putting the matter 
studiously avoids the very point at issue. As Dr. 
Driesch l has well phrased it : — " What physiological 
chemistry studies is only results that are chemically 
characterized — not results of processes that are 
chemical processes. It is very important/' he adds, 
" to understand well what this means. Of course 
chemical potentials have formed the general basis of 
all physiological chemical results, but these results as 
we know, are not due to the mere play of these 
potentials as such, but to the intervention of entelechy ; 
therefore something purely chemical is found in the 
results only, not in the processes. Without entelechy 
there would be other chemical results." 

No one has stated the case for vitalism more 
clearly, ably, and cogently than Dr. Driesch. His 
doctrine of entelechy goes to the very root of the 
matter. We must try to reach an understanding of 
what he means by entelechy. Is it an assemblage of 
natural conditions ; or is it a name for the constitution 
of the organism, that is the ground of organic 
phenomena ; or is it an extra-mundane Source of 
these phenomena ? 

There are certain processes which are characteristic 
of the living organism. It is the business of the 
biologist to deal with these phenomena in the terms 

1 Hans Driesch, " The Science and Philosophy of the Organism," 
vol. ii. (1908), p. 254 . 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 155 

of his scientific methods — to explain, for example, 
the development of the chick from the fertilized egg, 
or the restitution of a limb in a maimed newt. Now 
unquestionably all the processes of growth and 
restitution involve chemical or metabolic changes with 
which the chemist may deal according to his methods, 
and involve molecular changes with which the 
physicist, no less than the biologist, is concerned. 
Let us assume that all the metabolic processes, in so 
far as they are susceptible of treatment by the 
chemist, are interpretable in terms of chemistry, and 
that all the physical changes, as such, are found to 
be in accordance with recognized physical generaliza- 
tions. This may be more than the vitalist will grant. 
Let it pass, however, as an assumption which is the 
basis of scientific research. The question is whether, 
when the chemist and the physicist have done their 
work, there is anything left for the biologist to 
explain — whether correlated with these chemical 
processes and these molecular changes, there are also 
further processes which assume a specific form in the 
phenomena of organic growth that is nowhere to be 
found in the inorganic world. Dr. Driesch contends 
that they do — that the biologist may claim an 
autonomous field of research. Let us grant that he 
is right. As at present advised I should myself 
grant it freely and unreservedly. Let us, then, not 
only admit, but contend, that in the living organism 
there are specifically organic modes of synthesis. 
And let us provisionally agree to substitute for the 
familiar word organic, as qualifying, for example, 
growth and development, the relatively unfamiliar 
term entelechian. Then entelechy is the noun from 



156 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

which this adjective is derived ; it expresses the 
distinctively biological concept. 

In this sense I can accept entelechy as the 
specific ground of organic processes within a relatively 
autonomous province of the constitution of nature. 
And in this sense the term is sometimes used by Dr. 
Driesch. " Entelechy," he says, " is order of relation 
and absolutely nothing else" (p. 169). But the 
ground of all order in nature is for him, following 
Kant, to be sought in the constitution of the mind. 
Its home is among the categories. Unless I wholly 
misunderstand him, Dr. Driesch is so far Kantian as 
to hold that the given manifold of sensory experience 
is made into a cosmos by us human knowers. I 
accept, as I have said above, the other alternative, 
and believe that it is the constitution of nature that 
makes us human knowers what we are in the sense 
that we are just parts within the whole, and parts in 
which conscious relationships, strictly correlated with 
other relationships, have been evolved. But if the 
knower is himself thus part of the order of nature, 
may it not be reasonably claimed that, whichever 
alternative be accepted, the sole and sufficient ground 
of all experience and all scientific knowledge is the 
order of nature ? So far, as part of that order, 
entelechy may be accepted as a concept of value in 
biological interpretation. 

It must be remembered that on these terms 
entelechy is accepted as part of the constitutive 
nature of the organism. It is not accepted as a 
natural agent existent outside the organism and 
somehow acting not in but into the organism. When 
we are told by Dr. Driesch that entelechy is a natural 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 157 

agent which rules, determines, and controls organic 
processes (i. p. 227-8) ; when we are told that 
entelechy uses the brain as a piano-player uses the 
piano (ii. p. 97) ; when we are told that it is the task 
of entelechy to build up the organism (ii. p. 149) ; 
I seek to know whether crystallization is also a 
natural agent which rules, determines, and controls 
crystalline processes ; whether gravitation uses the 
solar system as a piano-player uses a piano ; whether 
it is " the task " of a committee of such agents to 
build up the universe. I seek to know what 
crystallization, gravitation, organization, and the 
rest are doing when they are not playing their 
pianos ; and what evidence there is of their exist- 
ence independently of their business avocation as 
instrumentalists. And this I seek to know within 
the universe of discourse of science which just accepts 
process as given, to be correlated with other process, 
and has no concern with the question why process is 
what it is. If we say that entelechy uses matter and 
material causality for its purposes ; if we emphasize 
by italics that entelechy is alien not only to matter 
but also to its own material purposes (ii. p. 336), are 
we not passing beyond the order of nature as given, 
in our search for an entity or entities through the 
Agency of which a part of that order has its Source 
and Origin ? Entelechy we are told (ii. p. 235) is 
affected by and acts upon spatial causality as if it 
came out of an ultraspatial dimension ; it does not 
act in space, it acts into space ; it is not in space, it 
only has points of manifestation in space. So, too, it 
is not in the material organism but only "manifests" 
itself in this material (p. 336). There is no living 



158 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

substance ; there is only substance which is used by 
life (ii. p. 246 and 248 and i. p. 93). Have we not 
here the manifestation of Agency as the Source of 
the order which is observed. It certainly appears to 
be so. For we are led up to the question whether 
the harmony in certain domains of nature does not 
point back to " an original primary entelechy that 
made it just as the artist makes an object of art;" 
to which the reply is that "the mind is forced to 
assume this primary entelechy in the universe," an 
entelechy which has not indeed created absolute 
reality but which has ordered certain parts of it 
(ii. p. 370). This may be a perfectly valid conception 
for the metaphysics of Source ; but it is not what I 
understand by natural science of which biology is a 
branch. 

I proceed throughout on the assumption that, 
whatever may be their source — whether it be Life, 
or Entelechy or God — all natural processes, including 
both organic and mental processes, are related within 
the constitution of nature, and must be correlated 
within our ideal construction of the natural order. 
That is what I understand by a universe. If we could 
tell the story of evolution up to date, it would be one 
story, all its episodes of process being in some 
measure related. But if it be one story, is there not 
one science of nature in terms of which this story may 
be told ? Professor J. Arthur Thomson asks x this 
question and gives a negative answer. But what are 
we to understand by one science of nature. Professor 
Thomson tells us that "it must consist of precise 
physico-chemical descriptions which have been, or 
1 " Hibbert Journal," vol. x., p. no (Oct. 191 1). 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 159 

are in process of being, summed up in mathematical 
terms." I take this to mean that the one science of 
nature must take into consideration chemical and 
physical relationships only, and must either (i) deny 
the existence of, or (2) exclude from its treatment, all 
other relationships, such as those which are specifically 
organic, still more those that are of the conscious or 
experiential order. Now of course Professor Thomson 
as a distinguished biologist is not prepared to do 
either the one or the other, and since he is precluded 
by his definition of the one science from including 
specifically biological relationships therein, he seems 
to urge that there are two sciences of nature — in- 
organic science on the one hand and on the other 
hand the science of biology. But it seems to me 
that the only possible justification of such treatment 
is the Bergsonian conception of two separate orders 
— the order of the inert and the order of the vital and 
the conscious. In other words the doctrine of two 
sciences is founded in a doctrine of radical dualism. 
The thesis I seek to develop is that there is one 
science of nature — that which includes all kinds of 
relationships. But of course this one science of nature 
must not be so defined at the outset as to limit it to 
physico-chemical relationships and to exclude all that 
is distinctively organic. Professor Thomson includes 
under biology certain phenomena in connection with 
animal behaviour which involve experiential relation- 
ships. That these phenomena cannot adequately be 
interpreted in terms of "precise physico-chemical 
descriptions," and in these terms only, is for me, so 
true as to be a truism. But I doubt whether there 
are many of even the staunchest upholders of a 



160 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

so-called mechanical interpretation, who would deny 
the presence of other relationships than those which we 
term physical and chemical, or would deny that these 
other phenomena are susceptible of scientific treat- 
ment. 

There is one further characteristic — a distinctive 
characteristic — of the phenomena with which biology 
deals to which allusion must be made. Professor 
Thomson rightly lays stress on the fact that organisms 
are historic beings. As W. K. Clifford said 1 in a 
passage which Professor Thomson quotes : — " A 
living being must always contain within itself the 
history, not merely of its own existence, but of all 
its ancestors." Every organism runs through a life- 
history which is substantially a cyclic repetition of 
that of its parents. What, then, is the relation of this 
distinctively organic sequence to inorganic processes ? 
We know indeed that as the life histories run their 
course they are in close relation to physical processes 
in the environment. But what about the beginnings 
of life on the face of this earth ? We must frankly 
confess that the mists of our ignorance hide the 
stages of correlation from our view. Must we then, to 
account for the origin of protoplasm, postulate the 
incursion of a foreign order, hitherto unrelated to 
the old inorganic order, and coming from an alien 
sphere ? If we do so we leave science and resort 
to the metaphysics of Source. What know we in 
science concerning this foreign order save in and 
through its relationships with the native order at 
the points of postulated incursion ? Let us once 

1 "Lectures and Essays," vol. i., p. 83. Discourse delivered in 
1868. 



THE GROUND OF EXPERIENCE 161 

more suppose that at some stage of world-develop- 
ment a sentient being might have observed the 
seemingly sudden (if it was sudden) appearance of 
lowly forms of organization. In what essential respects 
would such an occurrence differ from the seemingly 
sudden appearance of crystallization in the pre- 
crystalline magma of an earlier phase of develop- 
ment ? Let us at least be consistent in our thought. 
If we regard organization as an incursion from an 
alien sphere, let us also so regard crystallization. Let 
us apply to the inorganic world the same canons of 
interpretation which we apply to the organic world. 
But if we do so, in the one case as in the other, 
are we not postulating a Source of the occurrences 
which ex hypothesis might have been observed as 
matters of experiential fact ? 

What then is the other course open to us ? — What 
is the course which is here advocated ? The nai've 
acceptance of any such facts as can be established by 
observation and scientific inference. Among these 
facts is, I conceive, the frequent appearance of what 
must seem to contemporary experience to be new pro- 
ducts of synthesis at critical periods of the develop- 
ment of world process. I suppose few will deny that 
the genesis of crystals is correlated with certain 
assignable conditions under which that genesis occurs. 
Why should we deny, on the basis of our present ignor- 
ance, that the genesis of organisms is or was likewise 
correlated with certain other conditions as yet 
unknown ? Why should we deny that the constitution 
of nature, which is the sufficient ground of the 
genesis of the one, affords no ground for the genesis 
of the other ? 

M 



162 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

But if we are prepared to see in the constitution 
of nature the ground of all those processes with which 
science attempts to deal, and of all those products 
which are strewn along the banks of the flowing 
stream of process — in short of all perceptual ex- 
perience and all scientific knowledge — we must also 
be prepared to regard the constitution of nature as the 
ground of new and unforeseeable modes of synthesis. 
We must be prepared to regard the world at any 
stage of progress as one which is really evolving. 
And if it is evolving in this sense of exhibiting 
genuinely new modes of synthesis, the past can never 
be a wholly sufficient basis for anticipations with 
regard to the future. On this view of evolutionary 
progress there are, as M. Bergson and William James 
have claimed, unforeseen and unforeseeable possi- 
bilities in store for the universe. The tune of the 
future will not be merely a repetition of the theme 
of the past, with only such insignificant variations as 
may be due to minor rearrangements of already 
existent chords in nature's melody and harmony. 

Once more a note of warning must be uttered. 
The constitution of nature as ground is not to be 
regarded as independent of natural process ; nor 
as imposing on natural process the characters it 
possesses. Directly we so regard it we pass to the 
conception of Source. It is just the logical form, or, 
if it be preferred, the intelligibility of the world. It 
neither produces nor is produced by process ; it is 
the essential feature of the existing and evolving 
universe as rationally interpretable. 



CHAPTER VI 

NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 

IN earlier chapters I have attempted to interpret 
instinctive experience in terms of natural history. 
But can there be a natural history of experience ? 
Or is the attempt to give a genetic account of 
experience in terms of natural history, and science 
founded thereon, futile and foredoomed to failure ? 
I regard instinctive experience as the earliest phase 
of a continuous development in the individual, 
which may lead up to the enriched thought- 
experience of man. But am I not, it will be asked, 
beginning at the wrong end ? Can one explain the 
higher in terms of the lower ? Must one not reverse 
the procedure and explain the lower in terms of the 
higher ? Those who approach this question along 
such a path as ours regard human self-consciousness 
as a result of evolution ; it is, for them, the terminus 
ad quern to which or towards which development 
leads up. But those who approach the question 
through a different avenue, urge that self-conscious- 
ness is the terminus a quo from which we must start 
forth on our quest for explanation. Thus T. H. 
Green says l that self-consciousness is " at its begin- 

1 "Introduction to Hume," "Treatise of Human Nature," 
Green & Grose, vol. i., p. 166. (Impression of 1909-) 

163 



164 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

ning formally or potentially or implicitly all that it 
becomes actually or explicitly in developed know- 
ledge." There is of course a sense in which the 
naturalist can understand and accept this statement 
— the sense in which an acorn is potentially or 
implicitly all that it becomes actually or explicitly 
in the developed oak-tree. But here we have only 
an expectation founded on knowledge of routine, and 
one which implies the prior existence of such know- 
ledge, as this in turn implies the prior existence of 
a knower. In any case this is certainly not the 
sense in which Green's statement is to be understood. 
" A natural history of self-consciousness is," he says, 
"impossible since such a history must be of events 
and self-consciousness is not reducible to a series of 
events." This might perhaps be interpreted as 
indicating an insight into the distinction between the 
events experienced and the process of experiencing, 
or, as Green would have phrased it, between content 
and act. But for him the act implies an Agent, and 
the Agent is not of this world. Mind, though it 
may act into nature is not of, or belonging to, the 
order of nature. " A form of consciousness which we 
cannot explain as of natural origin " is, Green says, 1 
"necessary for our conceiving an order of nature." 
Here we have Consciousness as Source. For Green, 
as we saw in the last chapter, Source is all-important ; 
and his real point is that a natural explanation of 
Source is impossible. This may be freely granted 
both by those who believe in a Source of phenomena 
and by those who disbelieve. Now, in so far as 

1 " Prolegomena to Ethics," § 19, p. 23 (5th Ed. 1906). Italics 
mine. 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 165 

epistemology discusses the origin of knowledge, as 
distinct from its genetic development, it belongs to 
the metaphysics of Source. Its method of interpre- 
tation is to explain the lower in terms of the higher ; 
the end determines the course of events by which it 
is reached. Hence my reiterated contention that 
any commingling of the antithetical methods of 
metaphysics and of science is to be deprecated. 
Why should we not try to write a natural history of 
experience, as it somehow actually runs its course, 
leaving the problem of its Source to be discussed on 
a different platform ? 

But, granted that a natural history of experience 
might be written, were our knowledge far more 
adequate than it is at present ; it would, I take it, 
in strictness, be a natural history of an individual 
experience, just as the natural history of an 
organism is, in strictness, that of an individual. 
Granted, then, that on these terms, a natural history 
of experience might be told, the question arises 
whether this alone would suffice for scientific interpre- 
tation. The question is perhaps a little subtle ; but 
it opens up the wider question : — What is the relation 
of history to science ? If history, as such, always 
deals descriptively with a particular series of events 
forming a sequence which occurred within an 
assignable period of time ; and if it be the task of 
science to furnish an explanation and interpretation 
of these events in terms of general rules ; it does not 
seem possible to identify the one with the other. It 
would appear, rather, that it is the function of history 
to supply, on its own terms, the data for scientific 
discussion. Granted that history repeats itself — a 



166 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

statement which, as we shall see, may require some 
qualification — only in so far as it does so may we 
hope to ascertain the general rules which obtain in 
such repetition. Science can only deal effectively 
with the data which are afforded by routine. Only 
on the basis of routine can expectations and anticipa- 
tions arise. For Hume, custom afforded a sufficient 
ground for such routine. For a modern disciple 
of Hume, Professor Karl Pearson, 1 routine is 
grounded in the nature of the perceptive faculty 
itself. For us the ultimate ground of perception and 
custom and routine is the constitution of nature. But 
what is the constitution of nature but that to which 
our concept of the natural order refers ? And in the 
absence of recurrent phenomena could we ever have 
framed this conception of a natural order ? If 
physics, chemistry, and astronomy dealt with 
always fresh occurrences, without any repeated series, 
we might indeed have history ; but could we have 
science ? If the development of this oak-tree from 
that acorn were not substantially the same as that of 
other oak-trees from other acorns, and in like manner 
with a vast number of organic life-histories, could we, 
it may be asked, frame any generalizations that 
could properly be termed biological ? If again there 
were no recurrent phases of what is consciously 
experienced, could even that custom, on which Hume 
relied, have arisen ? Is not all co-operative work in 
the interpretation of nature dependent on the fact 
that sequences of events are repeated in and for the 
individual experience of different men ? Is it, then, 
too much to say that, apart from the repeated 

1 "The Grammar of Science," pt. i., p. 1 15 (1911). 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 167 

recurrence of sequences which, for the purposes of 
interpretation, may be regarded as the same, no 
such conception of the natural order as has been 
framed by men of science could have come into 
being ? 

There is unquestionably a central core of truth in 
the views implied in such questions. But is it the 
whole truth ? Is there not somewhat to be urged on 
the other side ? Suppose that we could know the 
complete history of the natural order up to date. 
We think of it nowadays in terms of evolution. 
Regard then the evolution as a whole and consider 
the thought-model men of science have framed of its 
progress. Does this history repeat itself ? Can we 
conceive that it has ever repeated itself in literal 
exactness, as a great progressive whole? Does the 
astronomer, touched with the spirit of evolution, 
believe that any period in the history of the solar 
system exactly reproduced the events of any preceding 
period ? Does the geologist, or the palaeontologist, 
believe that the physical features of the whole earth 
and the total flora and fauna all over the globe, were 
ever twice the same, so far as his researches enable 
him to form an opinion ? Has not every period, long 
or short, its distinguishing individuality ? If so, there 
is surely a valid sense in which it may be urged that 
our concept of evolution is antithetical to a concept 
involving the complete and through- and-through re- 
currence of any phase of the evolutionary process 
regarded as a whole. And when we narrow our field 
of view and consider the history of any given 
organism, still more that of the individual experience 
of any conscious being, is not the salient fact that 



168 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

history does not repeat itself — that history always 
comprises within its record some measure of genuine 
becoming, always presents something new, something 
unique ? 

It may, however, be urged that this so-called 
genuine becoming, this something new and unique, 
is only a re-grouping of world-old elements. But 
why only a re-grouping' 4 ? Is not every synthesis 
within the natural order, on this view, only a 
re-grouping ? What is thus stigmatized by the dis- 
paraging word only is, it may be urged, the essential 
and distinguishing feature of evolution, and should be 
recognized as such, not only by the psychologist and 
the biologist, but by the interpreter of inorganic 
phases of the evolutionary process. When crystal- 
lization first occurred in that part of the universe 
which is now our earth, there was in a sense only a 
re-grouping of molecules never before so grouped. 
In a sense, too, every time a crystal forms to-day 
there is only a synthetic re-grouping of molecules 
otherwise grouped just previous to its formation. 
But in the latter case, and in thousands of such cases, 
experience has afforded a basis, absent in the first 
instance, for the interpretation of crystal-formation 
in terms of routine. Let us admit then that, 
within the natural order as a whole, there are many 
details of the history which occur over and over 
again, and differ only in the time and place of their 
occurrence ; for we may here neglect the fact (if such 
it be) that no two crystals, for example, are ever 
absolutely alike, and that the balance of unlikeness, 
perhaps infinitesimal, gives at any rate just a little 
uniqueness and individuality. Though the history 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 169 

of the natural order as a whole (so far as we can form 
an ideal construction of the whole) does not in any 
two periods of time repeat itself, yet within that 
whole there are numberless repetitions sufficiently alike 
to be comprised under the generalizations of science. 

What, then, are the characteristics of such repeti- 
tions of process ? We may express the essential feature 
diagrammatically thus * : — Take the recorded curve 
of this bit of natural process, with its products, 
occurring here and now ; superpose it in thought on 
the curve-record of another bit of natural process 
which occurred at another time and in another place ; 
then if these records are substantially the same, 
so that the one curve approximately fits the other — 
history so far repeats itself. 

How stands the matter then with regard to the 
organism ? Does history repeat itself in a similar 
sense here ? Take the relatively simple life-history of 
the frog or newt from the egg through the tadpole 
phases. Or take the much more complex case of 
the liver-fluke, the Hfe-history of which is a series 
of quite romantic episodes. I conceive that in all 
such cases, simple or complex, the practical working 
zoologist who has no philosophical theory to 
advocate, will say that, in biology, history does 
repeat itself; that when the record of any one 
individual organism is compared with that of 
another of the same species there will be substantial 
agreement, and that to contend that there is not 
absolute identity is a bit of quibbling. But such an one 
cannot have learnt to the full the lesson of evolution. 
For, if in a long series, over a considerable period of 
1 Cf. Bergson, " Creative Evolution," p. 227, 



170 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

time, each successive individual is quite like its 
predecessors, where is the possibility of progress in 
the evolution of species ? On such a view where 
does variation come in ? Does not the history of 
biology teach us that whereas the older zoologists 
were content to believe that history does repeat itself, 
post-Darwinian biologists have learnt to accept the 
view that in strictness this is not the case ? Hence 
it can scarcely be termed quibbling to contend 
that in no two cases is there absolute identity. 
Will it not be wiser to say : — (i) that for the purposes 
of the systematic zoologist who is conducting a 
research on life-history there is substantial agreement 
in the case of the different individuals of any living 
species ; (2) that for the purposes of the evolutionist 
those minor differences which are termed variations 
must be taken into consideration ; and (3) that for 
the purposes of philosophic thought absolute identity 
between any two life-histories is, to say the least 
of it, highly improbable ? 

Combining these three, we may say that in any 
individual life-history there is a largely preponderant 
portion which is a repetition of what has occurred 
before in other individual phases of the history of the 
species ; that there is a much smaller proportion which 
is a variation from previous life-histories in the same 
line of heredity ; and that, though, among some 
organisms, this latter proportion is so small as to 
elude the closest observation, it is never a vanishing 
quantity. So too, in the natural history of experience, 
as one among the many concatenated processes of 
the natural order, we find, as in the organic characters 
which mark the course of the individual life-history 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 171 

of an organism, (i) some measure of substantial but 
never complete repetition, and (2) some measure of 
the new and unique. Here again, however, we are 
faced with the same difficulty of interpretation. Is 
the apparently new and unique a veritable " creative " 
departure from routine ? Or is it the algebraical sum 
of characters given in previous routines and therefore 
predictable if we knew the amounts of these 
characters and the mode of their summation ? I see, 
at present, no ground for denying, though I am not 
prepared to assert, that really new synthetic combina- 
tions, as contrasted with quasi-mechanical mixtures 
of old characters, do occur in the natural history of 
experience. But since, as matters now are, we have 
not the data for proof of either their presence or 
absence, let us be content to grant that they may 
occur. In any case a large measure of individuality 
seems to be emphasized in the concatenated experi- 
ential processes and products of the higher organisms. 
In a sense that is quite valid and true the mental 
life-history of the individual never in any of its 
phases repeats itself, nor is any phase an exact 
repetition of previous parental or ancestral life-history. 
Hence in the natural history of experience the same 
antecedent conditions never again recur ; hence I do 
not act to-day quite as I acted yesterday ; and hence 
it may be said that the concept of stereotyped 
routine — of ubiquitous uniformity of sequence — is 
here inapplicable. The assertion that like ante- 
cedents will always be followed by like consequents, 
the constitution of nature being assumed to be 
constant, may be true enough ; but what can be its 
value here, if, in the ever-changing flow of experience 



172 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

the same conditions never do recur ? All this has an 
element of truth ; and M. Bergson and his followers 
do well to insist on this feature of the conscious life- 
history. But surely it is not the whole truth ; for it 
ignores the fact that though, in strictness, the life- 
history does not repeat itself any more than does 
the history of the universe, yet there is in it enough 
of routine on which to found generalizations. M. 
Bergson seems rather extravagantly to over- 
emphasize the difference and to minimize the 
similarity in successive phases of the mental life ; 
but it must be remembered that for him routine and 
habit, though they are due to the Agency of Life, are 
part of the automatism Life has created, and are 
being, or have been, translated into the stereotyped 
order of the inert. Then and then only do they 
come within the purview of science so as to be 
susceptible of treatment in the static terms which 
science as he admits rightly employs in its interpre- 
tation. Still, granted that the quality of our 
experience changes from day to day, it is only within 
the narrow margin of this " creative " difference that 
the resulting actions are, in M. Bergson's sense of the 
term, "free." And this limited freedom is, for us, but 
not for him, grounded in the constitution of experi- 
ence which is part of the constitution of nature. 

We must turn aside here to consider briefly what 
we mean when we speak of the individual and 
individuality. It is convenient, in biology, to apply 
the term individual to the organism which embodies 
that portion of the continuous life-history which is 
relatively (but only relatively) isolated and runs from 
the cleavage of the fertilized ovum to the death of 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 173 

the adult, and begins again with the egg laid by the 
adult. Biologists will remind us that in some cases, 
as in that of the liver-fluke, there are, within the 
individual history, relatively isolable stages to which 
the term quasi-individual may be applied. They 
will remind us, too, that, where the egg is fertilized, 
any individual life-history is continuous with two life- 
histories. But these are only supplementary con- 
ceptions. The essential conception is that the 
individual is relatively isolated, and that it has certain 
characteristics which distinguish it as an individual 
from otherwise similar individuals. 

Now it is often asserted that outside the sphere of 
life no such concept as that of individuality is applic- 
able. We cannot affirm, it is urged, that each molecule 
of water has its own peculiar distinguishing characters 
which mark its true individuality. Perhaps not. But 
can we deny that it has ? No doubt in the interpreta- 
tion of the chemist any such individuality as atoms 
and molecules may possess, nowise matters for his 
purposes. For these purposes they are regarded as all 
just alike. But to assert that the real molecules to which 
that thought has reference- — the molecules as they exist 
(if they do exist) independently of that thought, have 
no distinguishing characters of individuality — that, I 
conceive, is to go further than known facts justify us 
in going. We cannot get at them to compare in 
minute detail each with others. We have no grounds 
for any dogmatic assertion on the matter one way or 
the other. There may be, therefore individuality, in 
molecules and crystals, in mountains, in rivers — in 
the inorganic world. None the less we may quite 
justifiably say that outside the organic sphere the 



174 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

concept of individuality is not applicable in the same 
sense as within that sphere. Nowhere in the in- 
organic world do we find such repetitive cycles ; 
nowhere else the cumulative effects for which heredity 
somehow " provides " ; nowhere else the subtly 
interrelated processes of differentiation from what is, 
or seems, comparatively homogeneous at the outset, 
combined with the integration of the differentiated 
products into an organic whole with characteristic 
unity. There is nothing quite like this in the in- 
organic world. And hence there is no stick individu- 
ality outside the sphere of the organic and the 
conscious. Let us, however, again fix our attention 
on the essential feature of individuality. It is what 
distinguishes this from that. It is the balance of 
unlikeness which distinguishes this individual 
assemblage of processes and products, from that 
other assemblage otherwise so closely alike. It is 
a kink in the recorded-curve which prevents it from 
quite accurately fitting the generalized statistical 
curve. But though the balance of unlikeness is the 
distinguishing mark of individuality it is not that 
which constittites the individual. The individual is 
the developing microcosm in its entirety. It is a 
differentiated centre within the macrocosm. It par- 
takes of the universality which characterizes the con- 
stitution of nature within which it is differentiated. 

Now does hereditary transmission " provide " only 
for that full measure of repetition which the study of 
organic and conscious life-histories discloses ; or does 
it also " provide " in some way for that far smaller 
measure of variation which gives to the individual its 
distinguishing characters ? 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 175 

We must remember that the organism which 
expresses, or is the expression of, the life-history is 
only relatively isolated. It is in relation to the 
environment. By environing conditions it is more or 
less modified in running its course. Some biologists 
believe that the modifications impressed on the bodily 
tissues of the parent beget correlated variations in 
the offspring. But since it is at present, to say the 
least of it, doubtful whether such modifications, due 
to environing conditions affecting the bodily tissues, 
are inherited, we may provisionally assume that 
variations do not arise in this way. Or, if it be so 
preferred, we will assume that the environment is so 
far constant that these conditions of modification 
may be eliminated from our present consideration. 
But if under these circumstances variation does still 
occur, would a complete knowledge of life-histories up 
to date enable us to predict its nature ? Is it strictly 
correlated with some parental or germinal conditions 
of its occurrence ? I take it that the orthodox 
biological reply to these questions would be in the 
affirmative. But some biologists would differentiate 
between the two questions. To the latter they 
would reply in the affirmative ; they would say that 
unquestionably there is hereditary correlation. But 
they might hesitate to affirm with equal confidence 
that even complete knowledge up to date would 
afford the basis of prediction — of foretelling the exact 
nature of a variation which ex hypothesi occurs for the 
first time and is therefore really new. If it be an 
algebraical sum of parental or ancestral characters 
here juxtaposed or mixed in a new pattern, it would 
be predictable on the basis of routine, since it would 



176 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

be only a new combination of old routines. But if 
the constitution of the organism should have reached 
a critical stage, analogous to that in which new 
crystals or new chemical compounds are formed — a 
critical stage at which new variations crystallize out, 
or organize out, if the expression be allowed ; then 
they would not be foreseeable, since previous routine 
would afford no clue to their nature. I do not 
contend that this is the case. I question whether 
there are biological data for deciding the question. 
All that I urge is that if such unforeseeable variations 
occur in the natural history of organisms, or in the 
natural history of experience, then the business of 
science is to seek the correlated conditions of their 
appearance, and to accept them as grounded in the 
constitution of nature, remembering that the world 
in which we live is still in the making, and may 
have much in store which even the most complete 
knowledge up to date would not enable us to 
predict. 

Now as we have already seen, new and unpredict- 
able events in the history of experience, and new and 
unpredictable variations in the course of evolution, 
are what M. Bergson terms " creative " and charac- 
terizes as "free." But for him they are not grounded 
in the constitution of the organism, as part of the 
constitution of nature one and indivisible, they are 
grounded in the constitution of life which is the 
Source of the creative and the free. " The spontan- 
eity of life," he tells us, " is manifested in a continual 
creation of new forms succeeding others " (" Creat. 
Ev." p. 91). " Heredity," he says, " not only transmits 
characters, it transmits also the impetus in virtue of 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 177 

which the characters are modified and this impetus is 
vitality itself" (p. 144). " It is the current of life, 
traversing the bodies it has organized one after 
another " (p. 27). And this life is identified with will 
" which is employed in some cases in setting up the 
mechanism itself, and in others in choosing the 
mechanisms to be released. The will of an animal/* 
we are told, " is the more effective and the more 
intense, the greater the number of mechanisms it 
can choose from, the more complicated the switch- 
board on which all the motor paths cross, or in other 
words the more complicated its brain (p. 265). No 
doubt in some of these and other such passages, it 
is a little difficult to be quite sure when M. Bergson is 
referring to natural process as distinguished from its 
products, and when he is referring to an extra-mundane 
Source which acts into (rather than in) the organism. 
In a sense we may say that heredity " transmits " 
the process of organizing ; that I suppose is what we 
mean when we say that characters, as the products of 
organization, are " transmitted." It would, however, 
conduce to scientific precision if the word " transmis- 
sion " could be superseded and heredity were treated 
in terms of correlation. On these terms M. Bergson's 
extra-mundane Life or Will would be the Source of 
existing correlations in the routine it has established, 
and the Source of new correlations in its creative 
capacity. When M. Bergson draws a distinction 
between " the evolved which is a result " and 
" evolution itself which is the act by which the result 
is obtained" (p. 53), does he mean by "act" a 
continuous natural process of which the organisms 
we can study are the products, or does he mean the 

N 



178 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

manifestation of extra-mundane Will? I think he 
means the latter. 

It must, of course, be remembered that M. 
Bergson's aim is to combine science and metaphysics 
in one comprehensive synthesis. He is, therefore, 
perfectly justified in introducing the concept of the 
Source of organic phenomena into his universe of 
discourse. Whether he does so to the benefit or to 
the detriment of biological science must remain a 
matter of opinion. My own opinion is that any 
introduction of the metaphysics of Source into 
scientific discussion is always detrimental to science. 
It always raises false issues. The current discussion 
of vitalism and animism is riddled through and 
through with such false issues — false, that is, within 
the field of science. Not content with accepting 
processes and products and their relationships, 
vitalists and animists persistently ask questions as to 
their source and origin, and straightway Entelechy, 
Life, Psychic Entity, descend from the blue of 
metaphysics to trouble the waters of science. The 
scientific task of correlating phenomena, especially 
the complex phenomena of living organisms, is 
difficult enough and is still in its early and tentative 
stages. There are a great number of correlation- 
questions (in the broader sense of the term, and 
not in the restricted Darwinian sense) — questions with 
regard to evolutionary and developmental conditions 
— which are easily asked, but which at present cannot 
be satisfactorily answered. To say that organic pheno- 
menon are due to Life which, to paraphrase Green's 
words, contains within itself potentially or implicitly, 
all that it manifests actually or explicitly, is no 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 179 

solution, not even the hint of a solution, of the 
scientific problem. M. Bergson in his criticism of 
Darwin and of later biologists asks a number of 
questions which have often been put before. If the 
variations which resulted in the vertebrate eye, he 
asks, were infinitesimal and insensible, how could 
natural selection preserve or accumulate them ? A 
sensible value is essential to make the difference 
between elimination or survival. If, on the other 
hand, they were appreciable in amount, and sudden 
or discontinuous in occurrence, how could so many 
complementary and independent variational jumps 
conspire to give the perfection of the organ ? Unless 
all jumped together in working harmony each several 
jump would be harmful rather than helpful. And 
how comes it that the pallial eye of the pecten, a 
mollusk, has a structure in some general features 
resembling the eye of man, a vertebrate? How 
comes it, for example, that in both there is a peculiar 
inversion of the retinal elements, so that their recep- 
tive ends are directed away from and not towards 
the object of vision ? There is no attempt to corre- 
late this arrangement with the presence of a pig- 
mented layer; no consideration of whether the presence 
of such a pigment layer is advantageous or not ; 
or of whether, if advantageous, it would be of any 
use in front of the retina instead of behind it ; or of 
whether, if advantageous behind the retina, inversion 
of the direction of the receptor cells is not a struc- 
tural necessity. Such questions, or their like, suggest 
lines of investigation. That is not M. Bergson's aim. 
His questions are put as posers to science. And 
because science can only feel its way towards definite 



180 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

answers to difficult questions — difficult to answer but 
easy enough to ask — we are straightway bidden to 
believe that all is due to Life ; we are invited to credit 
the potentialities of Life with all the actualities we find 
in tHe organism. As if that helped us in the smallest 
degree towards an explanation of the facts ! With 
all due respect for M. Bergson's poetic genius — for 
his doctrine of Life is more akin to poetry than to 
science — his facile criticisms of Darwin's magnificent 
and truly scientific generalizations only serve to show 
to how large a degree the intermingling of problems 
involving the metaphysics of Source with those of 
scientific interpretation, may darken counsel and 
serve seriously to hinder the progress of biology. 
" The Origin of Species " formulated a policy which 
has guided the scientific work of three generations of 
biologists. I search in vain in the pages of 
" Creative Evolution " for a hint of a working policy ; 
or if a policy is suggested, it is that of explaining 
biological phenomena by going outside or behind the 
biological field. M. Bergson would have us rise from 
mere science to the metaphysics of Source. 

Now, rightly or wrongly, we have elected to 
exclude the problem of Source from our universe of 
discourse. Even for us, however, M. Bergson's 
insistence on the cardinal importance of process, is 
none the less timely and helpful. "There is," he 
well says, " more in the transition than the series of 
states — more in the movement than the series of 
positions" (p. 331). If, as he believes, men of science 
and intellectualist philosophers, are apt to lose sight 
of the thread of process in contemplating the concept- 
beads they string upon it, M. Bergson does well in 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 181 

drawing attention to what they have, perhaps too 
readily, taken for granted and failed to render explicit. 
But when he urges that all process is, or is of the 
nature of, vital process ; when he arbitrarily sunders 
process, as belonging to a separate order of the vital 
and the conscious, from the static products of the 
order of the inert ; and when he presents his thesis in 
a style so full of charm and with a wealth of illustra- 
tion and of metaphor so rich and varied ; the need 
of protest, on the part of those who have been 
led to very different conclusions, is imperative. The 
difficulty is that there is so much in his suggestive 
thought that can be gladly accepted by the most 
resolute opponents of his central doctrine. There is 
a sound core of truth in his criticism of thorough- 
going intellectualism, based wholly upon what he 
calls its cinematographical method ; there is a sound 
core of truth in his contention that the one and only 
process of which we have direct intuitive awareness is 
that which, as living and conscious beings, we are. 
But he works these up into an argument of doubtful 
validity and cogency. The steps of the argument, if 
I have rightly grasped its purport, are these: — (I) 
The method of the intellect is to make a series of 
snap-shots by means of the instantaneous photography 
of thought ; (2) Such a series, so made, must for ever 
remain a series of separate thought-pictures, each one 
of which is inert and static ; (3) Hence process itself 
refuses to be photographed, and therefore cannot be 
intellectually conceived since the concept is an 
intellectual snap-shot ; (4) But the word process has 
a meaning and refers to something that really exists ; 
(5) This reference is always, in its first intent, to the 



182 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

life and consciousness which we feel coursing within 
us — that is to the vital order of which we are part ; 
(6) Thus only by intuition (as he terms it) and 
never by conceptual thought, with its inevitably 
static products, are we aware of process itself; (7) If 
then there be process, other than that of which we are 
immediately aware as we live it, we must somehow 
put ourselves in its place by an act of " sympathy " ; 

(8) But since we are ourselves vital and conscious 
agents we can only sympathize with other like agents ; 

(9) Hence all process is of the vital and conscious 
order, and even the order of the inert is only a static 
product precipitated from the dynamic stream of life. 
So runs the argument. If I have here misrepresented 
M. Bergson's thesis, I must plead in excuse the 
difficulty of the subject, the subtlety of his treatment, 
and the need for brevity. 

For M. Bergson, with his basal assumption of two 
orders of being, to one of which, from the outset and 
throughout, is assigned all process, all duration, all 
time — for time is very stuff of which life is made (p. 4) 
— while to the other is left only static and spatial 
juxtaposition in a world that is dead and inert, there 
is no other course than that which he follows. He 
assumes in his premises all that emerges in his 
conclusion. No doubt that is what we all do more 
or less ! He, at any rate, is bound by his basal 
assumption to interpret all process, whenever and 
wherever it occurs, in terms of conscious Agency, 
and to regard all order, all form, all movement in the 
world as due to this Source. He claims to be directly 
aware of Will as a Source of activity within him ; and 
since this is the only form of Source of which we have, 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 183 

or can have, immediate intuition, all modes of activity 
must for him be due to Will. The strict antithesis of 
his interpretation is that of those who explain all 
process in terms of physical Forces. For them Force 
is the Agency by which all process is called into being ; 
and conscious will itself is only the phosphorescent 
glow which accompanies certain physiological processes 
due to a subtle interplay of physical Forces. For 
M. Bergson process is reality and the Reality which 
underlies process is the Agency of Will. For 
philosophical materialists, or energists, process is 
reality and the Reality that underlies process is the 
Agency of Force or perhaps hypostatized Energy. 1 
For M. Bergson there are two orders, one of which, that 
of the vital and conscious, is the home of Reality, the 
other, that of the inert, being merely its sloughed off 
skin. For the materialists there are two orders, one of 
which, that of Energy, as the expression of Force, 
being the home of Reality, while the other is only its 
epiphenomenal phosphorescence. Both schools are 
in search of Reality as the Source of the phenomen- 
ally real. Both are, in our view, schools of the 
metaphysics of Source ; neither of them is content 
to be a school of science. Here we eschew all capital 
letters, and accept the real as given. We make no 
attempt to seek Reality as its Source — whether that 
Reality be Life, or Force, or God. 

I shall not attempt to define reality. I take the 
process and products of experience as a sample of 
reality. If anything in this universe is real, the 

1 On the tendency to hypostatize Energy see T. Percy Nunn, 
41 Animism and the Doctrine of Energy," in ** Proc. Aristotelian Soc." 
1911-12. 



184 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

conscious relationships within a changing context of 
reality, are real ; and in following up the contention 
of this chapter that the scientific treatment of 
experience is a branch of natural history, I propose 
to deal in some further detail with these relation- 
ships. 

But what are we to understand by the conscious 
relationship? If it be a relationship, then, it will be 
said, it involves at least two related terms. Of course 
in a complex context there may be an indefinite 
number of terms in subtly varying relations. But the 
analytic tendency of our thought leads us to try to 
deal with only two at a time; and so the natural 
question seems to be what are the two terms. The 
traditional answer to this question, where the 
experimental relationship is concerned, is that these 
two terms are object and subject. In perception, for 
example, there is the relation between the object 
perceived and the subject perceiving, and this may be 
followed by new relationships to the object through 
the activity of the subject which is expressed in 
behaviour. The subject is thus commonly regarded 
as an Agent, as a Source of behaviour. Those who 
are resolute in excluding all forms of Agency from 
any place in scientific interpretation, cannot accept 
this view of Subject as Agent. They just accept the 
reality of process and products. The natural order, 
as a going concern, is a vast system of interrelated 
processes ; and the relationships for scientific treat- 
ment are the contextual conditions under which this 
or that change in the moving order of nature occurs. 
Now few, if any, are likely to deny that the conscious 
relationship is present in intelligent behaviour ; but 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 185 

some do deny that this specific relationship makes 
any difference in the behaviour as such. Surely this 
is little short of preposterous. Surely it is tantamount 
to a denial that the conscious relationship has any 
reality in correlation with the context of the so-called 
objective world as real. In any case I must proceed 
on the assumption (if such it be) that the evidence at 
our command unequivocally shows that the ex- 
periential relationship does really count. But all 
that this implies is that given the presence of this 
relationship the observed facts of process are so and 
so : in the absence of this relationship the facts are 
otherwise : the course of process is different. There 
is no concept of Agency here ; merely a description 
of the relationships under which process runs this 
course or that course. 

What, then, are the terms of a relationship ? In 
general it may be said that any process which is in 
some degree independent may be in relation to any 
other process or its products. And what processes 
are selected as terms (or termini) is entirely a matter 
of fruitfulness for the immediate purpose in hand, 
within the sphere of interpretation of multiform 
correlations. For it is only by a useful but arbitrary 
act of abstraction that we isolate some part or phase 
of the total relational process and regard it as a term. 
We may thus isolate the organism and consider its 
relationships to the environment ; or we may isolate 
the process of experience and consider its relationship 
to other life processes within the organism ; or we 
may isolate some phase of the process of experiencing 
and consider its relationship to foregoing or following 
phases ; or we may isolate some process-factor in 



186 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

that phase and consider its relationship to other 
co-existent factors ; and so on. The essential point, 
so far, to bear in mind is that the natural order as a 
whole is a contextual network of interrelated processes 
and their products. The natural history of experience 
is the story of an arbitrarily isolated stream, and, for 
scientific interpretation it lies wholly within the field 
of intra-mundane reality. When once we leave this 
field ; when once we inquire what is the relationship 
between organic or experiential processes and Life 
as the Agency which calls them into being ; when 
once we inquire what is the relationship between 
conscious processes and the Subject which guides 
and directs them ; when once we inquire what is the 
relationship of the natural order to the Source of all 
things ; we are outside those limits of scientific 
inquiry which I for one accept. Why should we not 
endeavour to interpret the natural history of experience 
on the basis of intra-mundane relationships, somehow 
existent, without entering into such further inquiries, 
quite legitimate in their proper place, but none the 
less inquiries which lie beyond the confines of Science ? 
We have said that it is in some respects convenient 
to regard the conscious processes of the organism as 
a relational term ; they can then be correlated with 
the cortical or other physiological processes, and with 
processes in the environment. But in some respects 
it is often more convenient to regard the stimulating 
process and the responding process as the terms, and 
consciousness as the relationship itself between these 
two. When a boy, riding his bicycle, tends to fall 
over towards the left, he turns the handle-bar and 
wheel to the left, and, without knowing anything 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 187 

about the mechanical explanation, utilizes the 
principle of inertia, as we phrase it, to recover his 
balance. His experience lives in the relationship 
between the stimulating cue of just a little leaning 
over to one side, and the appropriate behaviour- 
response. In solving a problem the intellectual 
relationship is between the problem and its solution. 
In all temporal relationships within the conscious 
process itself the relation is between the antecedent 
and consequent phases within the process. Just as 
in the bodily life we live along the threads of organic 
relationships, so too we live the mental life along the 
threads of the conscious relationships. From this 
point of view streams of process pass through the 
organism, and some of these in their passage are 
experience. Consciousness as a relational link points 
this way and that way to the processes, or phases of 
the same process, in which it provisionally terminates ; 
or rather to processes or phases of process through 
which it passes on to lose itself in the vast whole of 
the natural order. 

Of course any such view as this involves the whole- 
hearted acceptance of relationships as constitutive 
of the natural order throughout, and not only con- 
stitutive categories of the mind as knowing and thus 
impressing on the mere matter of sensations (sensa) 
the form which makes the world orderly for human 
experience. The so-called a priori forms of relation- 
ship are, for us, not only constitutive of experience 
within the sphere of mind ; their peculiar primacy lies 
in the fact that they are common to the process of 
experiencing and to the world as experienced. To 
use the convenient phraseology suggested by Professor 



188 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

Alexander, they are common to the context as enjoyed 
and the context as contemplated. This enjoyment of 
context, this awareness of meaning, is through-and- 
through relational, just as the world-context and 
world-meaning which we interpret is through-and- 
through relational. Indeed it may perhaps be said 
without extravagance, and without much, if any, 
disregard of the traditional use of philosophical terms, 
that the basal a priori category is meaning. 

For us then all streams of process and all their 
relationships, general and particular, are constitutive 
parts of the one natural order wherein arises every bit 
of new becoming, every phase of evolutionary develop- 
ment which is interpretable in terms of scientific 
explanation. But we may in thought make cross- 
sections through the flow of events, and then we find 
relatively isolated streams of process, interrelated no 
doubt with other such streams, but yet possessing 
some independence ; or we may make longitudinal 
sections, and then we find much less of isolation — 
much more of continuity. It is this last fact, — a fact 
which is at the very foundation of evolutionary treat- 
ment, — which leads M. Bergson to insist on the 
importance of duration. In such a longitudinal 
section, along the flow of process, any stage or state 
ideally cut out from the pulsing continuity of events, 
is the embodiment of results of selective synthesis 
all along the line from an indefinitely remote past right 
up to the moment of its existence. This is true of 
all process as continuous. But nowhere are we led 
to grasp this fact so clearly as in the processes of life 
and in the processes of consciousness that are the 
highest developments of life. 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 189 

Now if we consider one of the higher animals at 
any given moment of its life-history we find a double 
set of relationships in accordance with our conception 
of the transverse and of the longitudinal sections 
across or along the streams of world-process. The 
first comprises the immediate relations to the environ- 
ment, including what, from the psychological point 
of view, is the presentation of some situation. It is 
clear that what I here speak of as the transverse 
section is that which is primarily concerned with the 
relationships involved in the perception of the 
external world. The second or longitudinal section 
comprises all relations of antecedence and sequence ; 
comprises the hereditary relationships ; and com- 
prises the phenomena of expectation and memory in 
their reference to future or past. The distinction it 
must be remembered is purely analytic. In actual 
life both are combined in one web. The analysis 
pretty nearly comes to this that, apart from other 
relationships, the one gives space-relations, 1 the 
other time-relations. But we must be careful to 
avoid the error of restricting time to the process of 



1 Of course time-relationships are also involved when we seek to 
interpret the transverse section. What is present in the ideal " now " 
of the moment of perception has to be correlated with events in the 
perhaps distant context of the environment ; and these events actually 
occurred within that context before the now of perception. If the sight 
of Sirius is under consideration the natural event of perceiving the star 
has to be correlated with the natural event of the shining of Sirius 
eight years ago. The hearing of distant thunder has to be correlated 
with an electric discharge, say, ten seconds ago, and so on. Time- 
relationships of natural events can never be really eliminated though 
we may disregard them in an abstract discussion of the transverse 
section which gives us the perception of the external world. 



190 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

experiencing, and restricting space to the realm of 
the experienced. 

Some years ago William James propounded the 
question : — Does consciousness exist ? In reply he 
denied the existence of Consciousness as an independ- 
ent Entity, while he fully recognized the existence of 
conscious relationships within an empirical nexus. 
I should prefer to say that from the point of view of 
science we should neither assert nor deny Conscious- 
ness as a Source. We should leave the question for 
metaphysics. But we should assert that the given 
conscious relationships (however given) are the proper 
subject-matter for science which should not go beyond 
them to seek their Source. To the questions : Does 
Time exist ? Does Space exist ? Does Causality 
exist ? Our answers would be of like kind. Temporal, 
spatial, causal relationships exist throughout the 
natural order, they are common to the processes of 
which the contemplated world is a visible changing 
expression, and to our enjoyment of a privileged 
process therein ; that is what gives them their deep- 
seated a priori character. They are ineradicably 
real as constitutive of a relational context which has 
meaning. But whether Time, for example, is a Real 
Entity, the Source of temporal relationships — that is 
a question which lies wholly outside our limited 
universe of discourse. 

Let us now pass on to deal with the relationships 
of the transverse section l in somewhat greater detail, 
remembering that our treatment is purely analytic, 

1 How far I am indebted in what follows to M. Bergson's doctrine 
of ft pure perception," I must leave the reader to judge. Cp., "Matter 
and Memory," p. 26 and passim. 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 191 

for in actual experience the transverse and the 
longitudinal relationships are given together in the 
brief span of consciousness which we enjoy. And 
let us, since we are proceeding by the method of 
abstraction, eliminate representative factors and dis- 
regard affective tone.^ Ideally in such an instantaneous 
" now " the organism is in physical relation to all 
that exists in the transverse section of the total flow 
of process ; practically it is in biological relation to 
that part of the world which we call its environment ; 
but psychologically it is only in relation to that part 
of the environment which is presented to sense at the 
moment of experience. Hence an essential feature 
of the transverse relationship, qua experiential, is that 
it is a selective and limited relationship, the selection 
and limitation being dependent on the sensory and 
nervous constitution of the organism. 

This selective and limited nature of the relational 
process of experience has its analogies throughout 
the natural order. " There is no essential difference," 
says M. Bergson, 1 " between the process by which the 
acid picks out from the salt its base, and the act of the 
plant which invariably extracts from the most diverse 
soils those elements which serve to nourish it. . . . 
In short, we can follow from the mineral to the plant, 
from the plant to the simplest conscious beings, from 
the animal to man, the progress of the operation by 
which things seize from out their surroundings that 
which attracts them." 

In the conscious relationships of the instantaneous 
" now " there are thus specialized limited and selected 
relations between the process which has the property 

1 " Matter and Memory," pp. 207-8. 



192 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

of experiencing and some parallel processes in the 
environment as experienced. Now the data thus 
afforded involve correlation with external events 
through sensations of sight, hearing, touch, and so 
forth ; but there are other data which are correlated 
with intra-organic events — snap-shot data due to 
general physiological tone (coenaesthesis) to visceral 
changes in progress, and to motor behaviour 
(kinaesthesis). These last, the behaviour data, are 
of paramount importance and give the business 
context of the data of sight, hearing, and the other 
special senses, when we restore to process its natural 
movement and change in time. If then we divide 
the data of the instantaneous snap-shot into those of 
extra-organic origin on the one hand and those of 
intra-organic origin on the other hand, these two 
sets of data form a synthetic complex of the ex- 
perience at a given isolated instant correlative with 
the process of experienczVzg*as then and there enjoyed. 
Of course this is a very abstract view of 
experience limited to an ideally instantaneous 
snap-shot. It is, however, scarcely possible to over- 
emphasize the importance of realizing the fact that 
even in such a snap-shot view a number of simul- 
taneous relationships, with varying emphasis, are 
themselves related within a complex. Apart from 
such relationing of relationships it is impossible to 
conceive a basis for conscious experience. Any 
selected group of data, such as those afforded by 
the sight of an object, are only a salient feature with- 
in a context, and this context is not only contemplated 
in thought, but enjoyed in the moment of experiencing, 
I cannot here enter into the subtle question, important 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 193 

as it is for psychology, whether relationing should 
be regarded as an elementary mental process not 
susceptible of further analysis. In any case it is of 
fundamental importance. The doctrine of context 
lies at the very foundations both of psychological and 
of physiological interpretation. 

But enough of the instantaneous snap-shot dealing 
only with the transverse section. In life its process is 
in progress. And directly we introduce into our 
analytic treatment the concept of progress, we 
supplement transverse relationships by longitudinal 
relationships. We thus get a continuous sequence of 
transverse sections. And that is what we get in 
instinctive experience according to my interpretation. 
What then is the nature of the longitudinal relation- 
ships in their incipient genetic form within instinctive 
experience? It is that which is expressed in the 
doctrine of the acquirement of primary meaning. If, 
in any given instinctive sequence a } b, c, d, e,f (each 
letter representing a transverse section), we fix 
our attention on the phase d it is partly conditioned 
by the precedent phase c> as that is by b and so on, 
and it partly conditions the sequent phase e. Such 
serial conditioning is dependent on primary reten- 
tion, which should be distinguished from memory 
as retrospection and from pre-perception. These are 
later developments of the longitudinal relationships. 
In our moorhen's dive the experiential process at 
any moment is not only conditioned by the data 
of the transverse section ; it is conditioned also 
by the precedent phases of process. The process of 
experiencing, as it flows, constantly changes in puls- 
ing continuity. I speak here, be it remembered, 
o 



194 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

of the instinctive experience as such, in abstraction 
from any secondary meaning which may also be 
present. 

The essential feature of this secondary meaning 
is that some later phase of an original instinctive 
sequence may be partially re-presented before it is 
again presented— or rather would have been again 
presented in the unmodified instinctive sequence. 
The conditions of the phase d are therefore different 
from what they were on the first occasion — different 
by the addition of factors of revival as they may 
be termed. And since the whole sequence, all along 
the line, is thus differently conditioned, the experi- 
ential process — correlated with the organic processes 
of behaviour — is different. There is intelligent 
modification of behaviour since new relationships 
have been introduced. 

Note here the intimate relation between meaning 
and context. Broadly speaking, if we may combine 
in one synthesis biological and psychological inter- 
pretation, context is meaning. Assuredly in the 
absence of context there is no meaning. And it is 
scarcely a straining of the use of terms to say that, 
in the earlier and lower phases of organic life, any 
stimulus has meaning within the context of the 
responses it evokes. The salient feature of psycho- 
logical meaning is that re-presentative factors are 
present and are influential within the context as a 
whole. In our higher mental life the context- 
meaning has been partly automatized and partly 
generalized into that awareness of conscious atti- 
tude which is so difficult to describe and to analyse 
— a conscious enjoyment correlated with the total 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERI ENCE 195 

functional activity of a complex constellation of 
cortical centres. 

Let us now consider a little more closely the 
longitudinal relationships when secondary meaning 
is being developed. They arise within the brief 
span of the living or specious present. Beyond 
this brief span they cannot immediately reach. 
Their forward direction within this span gives the 
peculiar quality of pre-perception of what is just 
coming ; and their backward direction gives the 
peculiar quality of what is just going, fading away 
at the rearward edge of the span. These two arise 
together. But pre-perception has the dominant 
utility in the primitive life of experience. What 
practically concerns the animal is what is just 
coming, that which at the outset of development 
is closely followed by the experience of the ap- 
propriate behaviour organically conditioned, and 
not yet conditioned by the expectant conscious 
relationship ; but that which (when intelligence 
supervenes), as coming, can be met or avoided. 
Expectancy has a practical bearing different from 
the theoretical bearing of retrospective memory. 

It is, I think, clear that all direct and primary 
experience of the order of expectation and memory 
must be sought within the brief span of process 
wherein these longitudinal relationships actually 
live. But it is equally clear that our memory and 
anticipation deal with a past stretching back far 
beyond the brief span of direct and primary 
experience, and with a future foreseen ahead of the 
living present These deal with the duration of 
process as an ideal constmction. Imagination and 



196 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

conception have played their part in making a map 
of space and of time. M. Bergson is substantially 
right in his contention that, in ideal construction, 
we translate temporal sequence into spatial terms. 
Just as we imagine and conceive process-filled 
space — the natural order as spatial — stretching far 
beyond the limits of the immediate conscious rela- 
tionship of the transverse section, so do we imagine 
and conceive process-filled time — the natural order 
as temporal — stretching behind the present span 
of consciousness as the accomplished past, and 
projected forward (so far as a basis of routine 
permits) as the expected future ; and combining 
these two in one ideal construction, we are able to 
picture and think the natural order as existent and 
changing in space and time. Any placing of an 
event at any exact moment in the flow of process 
is a reference to such a context of ideal construction. 

If, then, we live in the brief span of process 
which is the conscious present, it is within this living 
present that the process of remember/^ occurs ; 
only the remember^ events are referred to the 
ideal construction of the past. And they get their 
peculiar quality, that which differentiates them 
from the presentations of the snap-shot " now," partly 
from the fact that they are thus revived, or relived, 
partly from the sense of greater or less familiarity 
they import into the context, partly from the fact 
that they link up with the just-nows of the hinder 
margin of the span of consciousness — the past being 
the conceptual prolongation of its rearward fringe. 

For M. Bergson " pure memory " l is something 

1 Sec " Matter and Memory," p. 195, and sub verbo in index. 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 197 

very different from anything I have attempted to 
interpret in the foregoing paragraphs. For him 
Life and Consciousness have their true home in a 
different plane (one is forced to use spatial terms ! ) 
from that of mundane behaviour. Where these two 
planes intersect we have his " pure perception," since 
here the one order comes into relation with the other- 
But " pure memory " dwells in the vital plane and 
preserves an extra-mundane existence, save in so 
far as, at the intersection of the planes, it is presently 
inserted within the intra-mundane sphere. It is the 
still-existent duration of one's whole past, with all its 
dated events (how dated is not made clear) ever 
ready to insert itself into present action. For M. 
Bergson the past as " pure memory " has not ceased 
to exist, it has only ceased to be useful. Its mere 
utility for us here on earth is confined to the points 
of intersection. The past still exists in the vital 
plane beyond the view of present experience, just as 
on the other plane objects in space exist beyond the 
range of perception. If we find this concept diffi- 
cult, M. Bergson will tell us that this is due to our 
inveterate habit of projecting duration on to the 
plane' of space, translating it into a series of quasi- 
spatial points, and fancying that we have left these 
points behind us as we travel ; forgetting that the 
genuine Self, "which is indeed outside space," is 
duration, since " time is the stuff that psychical life 
is made of." Interesting, nay, fascinating in a tanta- 
lizing fashion, as is M. Bergson's doctrine of a 
continuously abiding past, with wedge-like inser- 
tions into present mundane affairs, it lies for the 
most part outside the natural history of experience 



198 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

which, for us, deals only with intra-mundane 
process. 

There is, however, a possible point of contact 
between M. Bergson's conception of the manner in 
which Life, as memory, is influential on behaviour, 
and our own widely-divergent interpretation. His 
teaching is that, so long as response follows directly 
on stimulus, there is no opportunity for the guiding 
activity of Life to be insinuated ; but that when 
there is some interval between the one and the other 
— when alternative channels of nervous discharge 
are established — then Life can insert itself and so 
far render the response an act of free choice. Now 
there is a sense in which we too can accept an 
interval of choice between stimulus and response ; 
there is a sense in which we can accept an intervening 
influence ; but for us it is not an extra-mundane 
Source of change that intervenes. For us the 
guiding influence that breaks the chain of that 
automatic and sub-cortically determined behaviour 
which I regard as biologically instinctive, is the 
functional process of the cortex in virtue of the 
correlated experiential relationships. 

We must now revert, however, to that which I 
regard as the cardinal distinction between what I have 
called, elliptically, the "eds" and the "ing" of 
experience. In this connexion we have to be on our 
guard against the puzzling ambiguity which results 
from the same word being used in both contexts. 
The word " sensation " may be used in one passage 
for what is sensed, in another for the process of 
sensing. So, too, perception may be the perceiw^ or 
perceivz'/^ ; the idea may be a product — what is 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 199 

ideaed, as in Berkeley's writings, or a process, as in 
much Berkeleyan criticism. The same ambiguity 
runs up into regions of higher and more complex 
mental development. Consider what we mean when 
we speak of scientific or philosophical thought. Do 
we not sometimes mean the body of doctrine which is 
the " ed "-product of investigation ; sometimes the 
process by which these results have been reached ? 
The teaching of science is both a presentation of what 
has been scienced, and a development of sciencing — 
of scientific observing and thinking. To add to our 
difficulties and our liability to confusion, we cannot 
even speak of our own process of experiencing save 
as that which is, at the time of its occurrence, ex- 
perience/, or, to use Professor Alexander's useful term, 
enjoy ed. Endeavouring, as best we may, to avoid 
these difficulties and to escape from this confusion, 
we have to note that both within the context of the 
" eds," and within that of the " ing," there are differen- 
tiations, but that whereas the differentiations of the 
"eds " — the objects of perception, conception, imagin- 
ation and so forth — are relatively clear-cut and 
isolated for thought, the differentiations of the "ing " 
retain much more of their primitive continuity, are 
much less sharply defined, exhibit in far larger 
measure what M. Bergson speaks of as interpene- 
tration. The several items of the perceived and the 
conceived have a relative discontinuity and mutual 
independence of each other which is in marked con- 
trast with the relative unity and continuity of per- 
ceiving and conceiving. Hence among the " eds " we 
have what M. Bergson speaks of as " the multiplicity 
of juxtaposition," whereas "just in proportion as we 



mO INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

dig down below the surface and get to the real self [as 
experiencing] do its states of consciousness cease to 
stand in juxtaposition and begin to permeate and 
melt into one another, and each to be tinged with the 
colouring of all the others." * I believe that this 
distinction between the " eds " and the " ing M of 
experience lies at the root of much of M. Bergson's 
philosophy; though he would not accept the interpre- 
tation I put upon it. He speaks of two aspects of the 
self. " Our perceptions, sensations, emotions and 
ideas," he says, 2 " occur under two aspects : the one 
clear and precise but impersonal ; the other confused, 
ever-changing and inexpressible because language 
cannot get hold of it without arresting its mobility or 
fit it into its commonplace forms without making it 
into public property." The former are the " eds " of 
experience ; the latter is a phase of the "ing.' 1 Again 
M. Bergson says 3 : " Sensations and tastes seem to 
me objects as soon as I isolate and name them, and in 
the human soul there are only processes!' The 
essential feature of duration is, for M. Bergson, the 
continuous development of experienc/^* as it grows, 
when our ego lets itself live, when phases of conscious- 
ness melt into each other, when every successive phase 
affords an example of creative evolution. " The 
capital error of associationism," he says, 4 " is that it 
substitutes for the continuity of becoming, which is the 
living reality, a discontinuous multiplicity of elements, 
inert and juxtaposed." "In place of 5 an inner life 

1 "Time and Free Will," pp. 162 and 164. 

2 Ibid, p. 129. 3 Ibid, p. 131. 
4 "Matter and Memory," p. 171. 

3 " Time and Free Will," p. 237. 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 201 

whose successive phases, each unique of its kind," 
melt into each other and interpenetrate, " we get a 
self which can be artificially re-constructed and simple 
psychic states which can be added and taken from one 
another just like the letters of the alphabet." 

For M. Bergson the distinction I have drawn 
between the " ing " and the " eds " of experience is 
that between the snap-shot data with which we deal 
intellectually and the intuitive awareness of the con- 
tinuity of conscious life. For Professor Alexander it 
is that between contemplation and enjoyment. But 
are we not, it will be asked, here putting more strain 
upon the distinction than it will bear. For surely, it 
will be said, intuition itself affords data which can be 
dealt with by the intellect; enjoyment itself can be 
contemplated. May we not make the " ing " of one 
moment the "ed" of a subsequent moment? May we 
not, for example, make the process of thinking the 
object of subsequent thought ? In a sense no doubt 
we can. But only by translating it into terms 
which may be conceive ; just as, according to M. 
Bergson, we can only deal with time intellectually 
when we translate the continuous duration of pro- 
cess into a series of spatial or quasi-spatial time- 
points. 

What I mean by translation can perhaps best be 
illustrated in reference to aesthetic appreciation. 
Although it is no doubt impossible to have this mode 
of enjoyment in the absence of any contemplation of 
beautiful objects in nature or in art, still at the 
moment of enjoyment the emphasis is on appreciating 
rather than on what is appreciated. And the question 
is whether at the moment or afterwards we can make 



<>02 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

the essential features of this appreciative enjoyment 
the object of intellectual contemplation. It is not 
easy to make one's meaning clear. When we are 
reading with full interest and attention, we are not 
interested in our interest, we are not attending to 
our attention. The " eds " of interest and attention 
are all in the subject-matter. Yes ! But afterwards, 
in reflection and retrospection, can we not then make 
the process of attending the object of our subsequent 
attention ? Can we not even, on re-reading in psycho- 
logical mood, squint round at our mental process to 
see how our enjoyment is getting on and what it is 
like. Surely it will be said we can think about our 
appreciative enjoyment, can discourse on it, and write 
aesthetic treatises which deal with it. But are the 
concepts we employ other than suggestive, other than 
symbolic of that which can only be reached through 
direct awareness in enjoyment ? It may be urged 
that all concepts, as cognita, are symbolic in universa- 
lized form of the concrete particulars which are 
directly experienced. Yes ! But here both particulars 
and universals belong to the realm of the experience. 
Both are what Dr. Alexander terms non-mental, in 
the sense that they are set before the mind for con- 
templation. The distinguishing feature of appreci- 
ative enjoyment is that it is not, in this sense, before 
the mind ; it is, so to speak, at the back of the mind. 
It is not what is appreciated ; it is a qualification of 
conscious process as appreciating. Can, then, the 
enjoyment of architecture, of sculpture, of painting, of 
music, of literature, with their subtle values in, rather 
than for, consciousness, be made the objects of contem- 
plation ? To this question, I take it, Dr. Alexander's 



NATURAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE 203 

reply * would be that in no way can we make enjoy- 
ment an object of contemplative thought. I am not 
prepared to go quite so far. None the less I feel that 
in translating the aesthetic enjoyment as such into 
the cognitional terms in which it must be presented 
to the intellect, we do in large measure transform it. 
And it is only with this transformed material that 
science is able to deal. 

1 Cf M S. Alexander " Self as Subject and as Person," "Proc. Aristo- 
telian Soc," vol. xi., p. 18 (191 1). Berkeley recognized that the enjoy- 
ment of the " ing " is different from the contemplation of the " ed " 
and suggested the term notion for phases of the " ing " since the term 
ideas, in his usage, was applicable only to the "eds" of experience, 
Cf., " Principles of Human Knowledge," § 27, " Siris," § 308. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 

WE tend to think, or, at any rate, to express our 
thought, in terms of antithetical contrast. 
A century ago Sydney Smith said * : — " The most 
common notion, now prevalent, with respect to 
animals is, that they are guided by instinct; that the 
discriminating circumstance between the minds of 
animals and of men is, that the former do what they 
do from instinct, the latter from reason." And he 
emphasizes the contrast when he says : — " When I call 
that principle upon which the bees or any other 
animals proceed to their labours, the principle of 
instinct, I only mean that it is not a principle of 
reason. However the knowledge is gained, it is not 
gained as our knowledge is gained. It is not 
gainedby experience or imitation. ... It cannot be 
invention, or the adaptation of means to ends ; 
because as the animal works before he knows what 
event is going to happen, he cannot know what the 
end is, to which he is accommodating the means : 
and if he be actuated by any other than these, the 
generation of ideas in animals is . . . very different 

1 Sydney Smith, " Sketches of Moral Philosophy " (Lectures 
delivered at the Royal Institution in the years 1804, 1805 and 1806), 
p. 240. 

204 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 205 

from the generation of ideas in men " (p 247). 
14 Ants and beavers," he tells us, " lay up magazines. 
Where do they get their knowledge that it will not 
be so easy to collect food in rainy weather as it is in 
the summer? Men and women know these things, 
because their grandpapas and grandmammas have 
told them so : ants, hatched from the egg artificially, 
or birds hatched in this manner, have all this 
knowledge by intuition, without the smallest com- 
munication with any of their relations " (p. 244). 

We have here the contrast between two different 
kinds of knowledge — two kinds which may indeed 
coexist in the same living creatures but which are 
essentially antithetical, or, at least, complementary in 
their nature — the knowledge that is innate and 
intuitive and the knowledge that is begotten of 
experience. And these two different kinds of know- 
ledge are the expression of, or are due to, two diverse 
principles or faculties ; the faculty of instinct and the 
faculty of reason. 

In our own day M. Bergson, in the philosophical 
doctrine of instinct to a consideration of which most 
of this chapter is devoted, also regards instinct and 
intelligence as, opposite and complementary kinds of 
knowledge. Although they arise as differentiations 
of a vital activity common to both, they are diverse 
expressions of divergent processes of evolution. 
More or less commingled in any given organism, it is 
the proportion that one bears to the other that differs. 
" There is no intelligence in which some traces of 
instinct are not to be discovered, more especially no 
instinct which is not surrounded by a fringe of 
intelligence. It is this fringe of intelligence that 



206 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

has been the cause of so many misunderstandings. 
From the fact that instinct is more or less intelligent, it 
has been concluded that instinct and intelligence are 
things of the same kind, and that there is only a 
difference of complexity or perfection between them, 
and, above all, that one of the two is expressible in 
terms of the other. In reality they accompany each 
other only because they are complementary, only 
because they are different, what is instinctive in 
instinct being opposite to what is intelligent in 
i ntelligence." l Instinct and intelligence thus involve 
two radically different kinds of knowledge. But 
"while both involve knowledge, thrs knowledge is 
rather acted and unconscious in the case of instinct, 
thought and conscious in the case of intelligence" 

(p. 153). 

The relation of instinct to consciousness in M. 
Bergson's philosophy is a little difficult clearly to 
grasp. Here he speaks of knowledge as " acted and 
unconscious " in instinct. But elsewhere he says 
that consciousness is " the characteristic note of the 
. . . actually lived, in short of the active " (" Mat. and 
Mem." p. 181). This indeed is a dominant note 
in M. Bergson's philosophy. Our consciousness — 
the consciousness we enjoy — is always a conscious- 
ness of the insinuation of spirit in the present 
moment of action. Furthermore he tells us that 
"instinct and intelligence stand out from the same 
background which for want of a better name, we 
may call consciousness in general, and which must be 
co-extensive with universal life " (" C. E." p. 196). 

1 " Creative Evolution" (translation of " L'Evolution Creatrice," 
by Arthur Mitchell) (1911), p. 143. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 207 

Again and again he seems to identify life and 
consciousness. But on these terms, if instinctive be- 
haviour is essentially a vital act one would suppose 
that it is also essentially a conscious act. M. Bergson, 
however, draws a distinction between two kinds of 
unconsciousness, that in which consciousness is 
absent {nulle) and that in which it is nullified 
(annulet). Both are equal to zero, but in the one 
case the zero expresses the fact that there is nothing, 
in the other that we have two equal quantities of 
opposite sign which compensate and neutralize each 
other. The unconsciousness of a falling stone is of 
the former kind ; that of instinct (in extreme cases) 
is of the latter kind (p. 151). Even here I find 
difficulties ; for even in the fall of a stone as a 
physical process I had gathered that, for M. 
Bergson, there is consciousness annulled. " No 
doubt," he says, " the material universe itself ... is 
a kind of consciousness, a consciousness in which 
everything compensates and neutralizes everything 
else, a consciousness of which all the potential parts 
balancing each other by a reaction which is always 
equal to the action, reciprocally hinder each other 
from standing out" (" Mat. and Mem." p. 313). 

But we are here concerned only with the annulling 
of consciousness in instinct. We must contrast it 
with intelligence. In intelligent action there is first a 
representation of the act to be performed, and then 
follows the performance of the act. Such repre- 
sentation is a measure of our possible action upon 
bodies, it is an outline in matter of our eventual 
action upon it. Now hesitation or choice is a sign 
of the inadequacy of the act at once to fulfil and 



208 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

thus to neutralize the representation ; and this inade- 
quacy of the one to neutralize the other is emergent 
consciousness — a consciousness "which may be de- 
fined as an arithmetical difference between potential 
and real activity. It measures the interval between 
representation and action." But if this interval be 
annulled, if representation and performance coalesce, 
consciousness is neutralized. "The representation 
of the act is held in check by the performance of 
the act itself, which resembles the idea so perfectly, 
and fits it so exactly, that consciousness is unable 
to find room between them. Representation is 
stopped up by action." Consciousness however does 
not even then cease to exist ; for if the accomplish- 
ment of the act be arrested or thwarted by an 
obstacle, consciousness may emerge. The interval 
between representation and action is reconstituted. 
Hence in instinctive behaviour " where consciousness 
appears, it does not so much light up the instinct 
itself as the thwartings to which instinct is subject ; 
it is the deficit of instinct, the distance between 
the act and the idea, that becomes consciousness" 
(p. 152). 

When we remember that it is only in extreme 
cases that representation is thus stopped up by action, 
we may perhaps fairly assume that these extreme 
cases illustrate instinctive behaviour carried to its 
ideal limits ; in other words that they are those cases 
which, according to my interpretation, are strictly 
speaking instinctive — those in which pre-perception 
does not intervene between the constellation of stimuli 
and the resulting response. On the other hand in 
those cases in which some intelligent pre-perception, 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 209 

in my sense of the word intelligent, does play a 
part in determining behaviour, we have the " deficit 
of instinct" which has a conscious accompaniment. 
I take it that for M. Bergson, that which is insinuated 
between stimulation and response, that which breaks 
the coalescent sequence of pure automatism, is " pure 
memory," the characteristic of which is to become 
conscious in action. If this be so, his insertion of 
" pure memory " in the guidance of behaviour is 
analogous to the presence of factors of revival in my 
interpretation ; and we both should regard such 
behaviour as showing something more or something 
less than instinctive purity — as exhibiting therefore a 
deficit of instinct as such. 

In so far as " pure memory " is insinuated as choice 
within the interstices of an otherwise automatic and 
strictly instinctive sequence the activity is really 
vital. For we must bear in mind that when M. 
Bergson bids us identify life and consciousness, it is 
life as " free " and u creative " — not merely mechanized 
and automatized routine — to which reference is made. 
It is true that automatism is the result of life, but it 
is the result of life's surrender of its essential activity, 
a lapse into mechanical routine. If, however, as mere 
biologists, we understand by life the sum-total of the 
physiological processes of which the organism is the 
privileged centre, an indefinitely large proportion of 
consciousness is "annulled" and hence, for mere 
business purposes of interpretation, may be safely 
regarded as non-existent. If so, the conception may 
perhaps be brought into some sort of relation with 
the view held by some earlier exponents of physio- 
logical psychology, according to which consciousness 
p 



210 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

is correlated with a measure of obstruction or tension 
in the cerebral cortex — with some resistance to be 
overcome, of which delay in response is an indication ; 
whereas consciousness is absent when the molecular 
disturbances in the cortex, initiated by sensory stimu- 
lation, are rapidly and smoothly drafted off along 
channels pre-established through heredity or through 
constant habit, leading to automatic response. " In 
the latter case," said Romanes, 1 "the routes of 
nervous discharge have been well-worn through 
use ; in the former case these routes have to be 
determined by a complex play of forces amid the 
cells and fibres of the cerebral hemispheres. And 
this complex play of forces which finds its physio- 
logical expression in a lengthening of the time of 
latency, finds its psychological expression in the 
rise of consciousness." I do not wish to suggest that 
M. Bergson's conception of the relation of conscious- 
ness to the phenomena of brain-physiology is at all 
like that of Romanes. Indeed they are poles 
asunder. But there seems to be this in common ; 
that when automatism is complete, consciousness is 
absent ; or, as M. Bergson would say, is annulled. 

It will be remembered that M. Bergson distin- 
guishes and contrasts two orders, that of the vital and 
the willed, in opposition to that of the inert and the 
automatic. The brain in all its parts belongs entirely 
to the latter order, it is only a cunningly arranged set 
of neurones, an elaborate and complex switch-board, 
which Life has made for its use, which Life has in large 
measure allowed to descend to materialized auto- 
matism, but within which Life has contrived, with 

1 G. J. Romanes, "Mental Evolution in Animals" (1885), p. 74. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 211 

some success in the higher vertebrates and with much 
greater success in man, to leave room for the insertion 
of its free and creative activity. The measure of 
success in man is such that his brain has become a 
perfect " reservoir of indeterminism " — that is to say 
a system full of opportunities for the insinuation of 
choice between alternatives. It is essential to the 
proper understanding of M. Bergson's philosophical 
doctrine that we should remember that the function 
of the brain is to provide a vast number of alternative 
routes by which afferent impulses due to stimulation 
may be conducted to the effector organs which sub- 
serve behaviour. It is in itself wholly and solely a 
mechanism of conduction. It is in no sense a store- 
house of memories ; for memories are preserved in the 
realm of spirit which is extra-spatial. From this 
realm they play down upon the switch-board of the 
nervous system. In so far, therefore, as choice is 
insinuated and an action is free and creative, this is 
in no sense a function of the brain ; its Source is in 
the unconscious sphere of "pure memory" — which 
is the sphere of spirit, — only at the point of its 
insertion into present action does it glow with the 
light of consciousness. 

We have, therefore, two, if not three kinds of 
unconsciousness: (i) that of the falling stone; (2) 
that of automatism (consciousness annulled) ; and (3) 
that of pure memory when it is not being insinuated 
in the present moment of action. I separate (2) 
and (3) in accordance with the statement in " Creative 
Evolution," though it seems to conflict with that of 
" Matter and Memory " {supra, p. 207J. A word or 
two must be added with regard to (3). Pure memory 



212 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

is the continuous existence of mind or spirit, and 
this is the vital impetus — the Source of all process. 
As pure memory it abides in the still existent past, 
outside the plane of space within which the material 
body and brain are rendered perceptible to the senses 
and the intellect. But this mind, this spirit, this pure 
memory, exists, not as what we are aware of as 
consciousness, but as a mode of the unconscious. 
Unless I misunderstand the teaching of " Matter and 
Memory," M. Bergson is convinced that a refusal 
to recognize the fact that the greater part of one's 
pure memory is an unconscious form of real existence, 
is tantamount to a refusal to recognize the existence 
of Life and Spirit as Reality — as active and forceful 
duration. And that which, according to M. Bergson» 
leads us to deny the existence of unconscious mind 
is our persistent neglect of the fact that the conscious- 
ness of which we have intuitive knowledge, is always 
in alliance with some present phase of practical 
activity. To guide this activity is the business of 
consciousness in and for the organism ; only at its 
points of insertion in our mundane life of space- 
occupancy, does mind and memory glow with what, 
for us, in whom this insertion takes place, is conscious 
awareness. In a sense we may say that what we 
feel as consciousness is the friction of unconscious 
spirit as it traverses unconscious brain matter. But 
the Spirit which exists in time, which is duration, 
and which is only occasionally inserted in the 
mundane affairs of inert space, though it is itself 
unconscious, and contains only the potentiality of 
that consciousness which is actualized in the present 
moment of choice, is never inactive ; nay, rather it is 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 213 

pure activity, the Source of all change. It is the 
Source of instinctive behaviour. 

Now, in instinctive behaviour, the current of life 
passes through the organism ; and, as it passes, it 
glows with instinctive knowledge, though much of 
the consciousness may be annulled through the 
stopping up of the chinks of choice. I am not quite 
clear as to M. Bergson's position with regard to the 
relation of pure memory to hereditary sequence. 
But I take it that the current of life which streams 
through any organism, let us say a newly emergent 
bee or a newly hatched chick, contains unconsciously, 
in the sphere of pure memory, a complete unbroken 
and continuous record of the whole history of its 
particular line of racial descent to the most remote 
past, all of which is for M. Bergson still existent in 
the sphere of duration. But of this immense fund of 
pure memory, only that small fraction which is useful 
to that bee or chick in its present activities has the 
conscious instinctive glow. Still, it is this accumu- 
lated knowledge of the past, just in so far as it is 
inserted in present behaviour, that is the psychical 
basis of instinct as a form, not merely of mechanized 
automatism, but of life and duration and knowledge. 
Thus, I think, would M. Bergson explain the 
hereditary nature of instinctive behaviour. Thus 
does he elaborate a philosophy of instinct. If we 
divorce his theory of instinct from his doctrine of 
pure memory, with its storage in continuous existence 
of the whole of past life-history, we must fail to 
grasp its significance within his system of thought. 
The naturalist and the man of science may find in it 
little to their taste. But it is not meant for them. 



214 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

They seek merely to describe and state in general 
terms the correlated stages of an intra-mundane 
sequence of observable or inferable phenomena. 
The whole of this elaborate theory of pure memory 
— interesting as it is as a metaphysical speculation, 
touched with poetry — may be ignored by the 
naturalist. It does not afford any clue to scientific 
interpretation. 

Here, however, we seek to understand M. Bergson, 
and must therefore take him on his own terms. In 
instinct, a small but very useful portion of an in- 
definite fund of the potential knowledge of pure 
memory is rendered actual — just that which is wanted 
for the business purposes of life. But this is true also 
of all life-processes, "so that we cannot say . . . 
where organization ends and where instinct begins." 
" When we see," says M. Bergson, " in a living body 
thousands of cells working together for a common 
end, dividing the task between them, living each for 
itself at the same time as for others, preserving itself, 
feeding itself, reproducing itself, responding to the 
menace of danger by appropriate defensive reactions, 
how can we help thinking of so many instincts ? 
And yet they are the natural functions of the cell, 
the constitutive elements of its vitality. ... In both 
cases, in the instinct of the animal and in the vital 
properties of the cells, the same knowledge and the 
same ignorance is shown. All goes on as if the cell 
knew, of the other cells, what concerns itself; as if 
the animal knew, of other animals, what it can utilize 
— all else remains in shade" (pp. 174-176). Even in 
the automatism of the vital processes, such as those 
of nutrition, or the development of the embryo, pure 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 2i5 

memory embracing the whole history of the past is 
operative. Just that part of the accumulated fund 
which subserves vital utility is insinuated. This 
selective part is knowledge, all the rest is an un- 
utilized balance of ignorance. There is choice just in 
so far as there is this selective discernment of what is 
here and now useful. For though the material 
structures — the cells, tissues, and organs that we see 
— have been materialized and mechanized, process 
and change are the sole prerogative of life. It is the 
Life of the universe that gives it movement and flow ; 
otherwise it would be a mere row of static or 
immobile snap-shots of the inert. But in the organized 
flow of vital processes, the consciousness is annulled ; 
and in the instinct that is reduced to the level of 
automatic flow of organized routine (the "extreme 
cases") the knowledge is of the unconscious order. 
One would like to be told in language altogether free 
from ambiguity what the nature of this knowledge 
with consciousness annulled actually is. The concept 
is difficult to grasp. But we may now turn to other 
aspects of M. Bergson's treatment of instinct. For as 
we follow his discussion in its further implications, 
the development of the subject proceeds as if instinct 
were a kind of knowledge not less radiantly conscious 
than intelligence. 

Let us accept this position without seeking to 
harmonize the doctrine of the annulling of conscious- 
ness in extreme, and one would therefore have 
thought typical, cases of instinct, with that of the 
specific nature of the instinctive consciousness as 
such. Instinct, then, is a kind of conscious knowledge 
co-ordinate with that of intelligence ; but it is a 



216 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

radically different kind of knowledge (p. 150). It 
reaches its highest development in the arthropods, 
and especially in the insects, as intelligence reaches 
its highest development in the vertebrates, especially 
in man. " We may surmise," says M. Bergson, in a 
passage which I must quote in full, " that they began 
by being implied in each other, that the original 
psychic activity included both at once, and that, if we 
went far enough back into the past, we should find 
instincts more nearly approaching intelligence than 
those of our insects, intelligence nearer to instinct 
than that of our vertebrates, intelligence and instinct 
being, in this elementary condition, prisoners of a 
matter which they are not yet able to control. If 
the force immanent in life were an unlimited force, it 
might perhaps have developed instinct and intelli- 
gence together, and to any extent, in the same 
organisms. But everything seems to indicate that 
this force is limited, and that it soon exhausts itself 
in its very manifestation. It is hard for it to go far 
in several directions at once : it must choose. Now, 
it has the choice between two modes of acting on the 
material world : it can effect this action directly by 
creating an organized instrument to work with ; or 
else it can effect it indirectly through an organism 
which, instead of possessing the required instrument 
naturally, will itself construct it by fashioning in- 
organic matter. Hence, intelligence and instinct, 
which diverge more and more as they develop, but 
which never entirely separate from each other. On 
the one hand, the most perfect instinct of the insect 
is accompanied by gleams of intelligence, if only in 
the choice of place, time, and materials of construction. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 217 

. . . But, on the other hand, intelligence has even 
more need of instinct than instinct has of intelli- 
gence ; for the power to give shape to crude matter 
involves already a superior degree of organization, a 
degree to which the animal could not have risen, 
save on the wings of instinct. So, while nature has 
frankly evolved in the direction of instinct in the 
arthropods, we observe in almost all the vertebrates 
the striving after rather than the expansion of intelli- 
gence. It is instinct which still forms the basis of 
their psychical activity ; but intelligence is there, and 
would fain supersede it. Intelligence does not 
succeed in inventing instruments ; but at least it tries 
to, by performing as many variations as possible on 
the instinct which it would like to dispense with. It 
gains complete self-possession only in man, and this 
triumph is attested by the very insufficiency of the 
natural means at man's disposal for defence against 
his enemies, against cold and hunger. This in- 
sufficiency, when we strive to fathom its significance, 
acquires the value of a prehistoric document ; it 
is the final leave-taking between intelligence and 
instinct" (pp. 149, 150). 

I have quoted this passage at length because 
it well illustrates M. Bergson's picturesque and 
imaginative treatment of one phase of creative 
evolution. He pictures the vital impetus standing 
at the parting of the ways, and choosing instinctive 
development for the arthropods, intelligent for the 
vertebrates and man. Of course it must be taken as 
a poetic rendering of the drama of life rather than 
as an attempt at scientific interpretation. M. Bergson 
enters sympathetically into the evolutionary process ; 



218 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

he feels the onward push of the vital impetus ; he is 
borne now along the stream of instinct, and now 
down the current of intelligence ; he seeks to know 
them from within as life alone can be known. And 
we too, if we would, in some degree, profit by his 
insight, must enter sympathetically into the current 
of his thought ; must endeavour to place ourselves at 
his point of view ; must try to catch the breath of his 
intuition. I, too, stand at the parting of the ways. 
And I choose that of instinctive sympathy so far as 
in me lies. 

I do not propose, therefore, to discuss from the 
scientific point of view, the biological aspect of the 
doctrine of two divergent paths, one of which has led 
to the instincts of arthropods and the other to the 
intelligence of vertebrates. The observable differences 
of behaviour in bees and in birds, for example, are 
correlated with differences of general structure 
and internal anatomy, with differences of sensory 
endowment and build of the nervous system, with 
differences of mode of development, with differences 
of ancestral history, with differences of environment, 
with different kinds of relationship to their companions 
and to other organisms, and so forth. All of 
these would need careful consideration — preliminary 
analysis and subsequent synthesis — if the divergence 
of the evolutionary products at the end of such 
divergent routes were to be interpreted in the spirit 
of science. We should have to estimate with care 
the value of the evidence for so marked a con- 
centration of instinct in the arthropods as a group, 
and so marked a concentration of intelligence 
in the vertebrates as M. Bergson takes as a 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 219 

basis for his position. Mr. Wildon Carr 1 has 
laid even more stress on it, and in a more un- 
compromising manner, than M. Bergson himself. 
Mr. McDougall 2 has criticized it, claiming for the 
solitary wasps " a degree of intelligence which (with 
the doubtful exception of the higher mammals) 
approaches most nearly to the human." These 
questions, however, interesting as they undoubtedly 
are, may be left on one side. It suffices for M. 
Bergson's doctrine that the instinctive kind of know- 
ledge largely predominates in the behaviour of certain 
organisms, and that the intelligent kind of knowledge 
largely predominates in the behaviour of certain 
other organisms ; what is essential is that the two 
kinds of knowledge, though they may both be present 
in differing proportions are radically diverse in kind, 
" what is instinctive in instinct being opposite to what 
is intelligent in intelligence." 

Where shall we seek the exact nature of this deep- 
seated distinction ? We are here faced by a difficulty 
which is seemingly at first sight insurmountable. 
For, owing to the radical nature of the incompatibility, 
"that which is instinctive in instinct cannot be 
expressed in the terms of intelligence, nor, 
consequently, can it be analysed " (p. 177). If, then, 
we seek intelligently and intelligibly to express the 
distinction between two modes of knowing, to the 
nature of one of which no expression in terms of 
intelligence can be given, we appear to be seeking 
that which the very conditions of the quest preclude 
us from finding. But life is in the same predicament 

1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 232. 

2 Ibid, p. 255. 



220 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

as instinct ; for " the intellect is characterized by an 
inherent inability to comprehend life" (p. 174). 
These are hard sayings ; and yet like other hard 
sayings they contain a central core of truth. It is of 
this central core that we are in search. 

May we say that through instinct an organism 
knows without having to learn, whereas the know- 
ledge of intelligence comes through a process of 
learning ? No ! this does not express the fundamental 
difference, though it leads up to the consideration of 
a distinction. Instinct does indeed know many 
things without having learned them ; knows, for 
example, how to use those parts of the body which 
are its organized instruments (p. 146). But M. 
Bergson tells us that if we look at intelligence from 
the same point of view, we find that it also knows 
certain things without having learned them (p. 155). 
For him the distinction here lies rather in the 
difference in the mode of knowing and in what is 
known. In both instinct and intelligence there is 
innate knowledge. But whatever in instinct and 
intelligence is innate knowledge, bears in the first 
case on things, and in the second on relations. Here, 
so far as intelligence is concerned, M. Bergson reverts 
to the constitutive categories. In whatever way we 
make an analysis of thought, he says (p. 156), we 
always end with one or several general categories of 
which the mind possesses innate knowledge since it 
makes natural use of them. Hence, in the language 
of philosophy, " intelligence, in so far as it is innate, 
is the knowledge of zform; instinct implies a know- 
ledge of a matter" (p. 157), 1 and he claims that this 

1 By "matter " we should not understand M. Bergson to mean the 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 221 

entirely formal knowledge of intelligence has an 
immense advantage over the material knowledge of 
instinct. A form, just because it is empty, may be 
filled with any number of things in turn (p. 159). I 
believe, however, that this time-honoured distinction 
between things and their relations, between the 
matter and the form of that which is experienced, 
leads us away from and not towards the central core 
of truth in M. Bergson's doctrine. It is, indeed, true 
that only intelligence, and only highly developed 
intelligence, can distinguish analytically between 
things and their relationships, between matter and 
form. Relationship and form are concepts of 
intellectual thought. By that thought they are 
rendered explicit. But if " the behaviour of the insect 
involves, or rather evolves, the idea of definite things 
existing or being produced in definite points of space 
and time, which the insect knows without having 
learned them" (p. 154), surely the relationships 
thus " involved or evolved " are there and are 
constitutive of that instinctive knowledge. The 
distinction between instinct and intelligence in this 
respect is therefore that for the former the relation- 
ship and form are implicit, while for the latter they 
are rendered explicit. This may be true enough ; 
but I conceive that the radical difference lies deeper 
than this. 

How, then, does M. Bergson himself sum up the 
net result of his preliminary considerations with regard 
to the radical distinction ? " The difference," he says 

material order, for that is known by intelligence and the intellect. 
Should we understand him to mean the substance of life— the reality 
of process ? Cf. " as two activities," infra, p. 224. 



Zn INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

(p. 159), " that we shall now proceed to denote between 
instinct and intelligence is what the whole of this 
analysis was meant to bring out. We may formulate 
it thus : — There are things that intelligence alone is 
able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. 
These things instinct alone could find ; but it will 
never seek them." I can myself accept this formula 
which accords well with my conception of instinct. 
For instinct never seeks though, within its range of 
behaviour, it is remarkably successful in finding. It 
is true that we should say, in the language of popular 
speech, that an animal instinctively seeks its food, 
seeks a mate, and so forth. But, in strictness, to seek 
surely involves an anticipation of that which, through 
seeking, may be found ; and within the instinctive 
consciousness I can only provisionally admit the 
presence of a form of pre-perception so dim and 
vague that such anticipation of what is to be sought 
and may be found is, in my interpretation, practically 
negligible as a guide to behaviour. Instinct, however, 
does none the less effectively provide, in a biological 
fashion, those preliminary findings, which afford the 
opportunities for subsequent revival, and which thus 
render possible intelligent seeking. The things which 
instinct finds, though it seeks them not, are those 
things which subserve the preservation of the in- 
dividual, and, through the individual, of the race ; and 
these things, when they are subsequently sought, are 
sought just because their like have previously been 
found through instinctive behaviour. I do not of 
course claim that this represents M.Bergson's meaning. 
His distinction, I believe, here, as elsewhere, is that 
between the intuitive " knowledge " that life alone can 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 223 

give ; and the system of cinematographical snap-shots 
which intelligence takes of the external world in space, 
and from which all our intellectual knowledge is 
elaborated. 

We are getting nearer to the central core of M. 
Bergson's doctrine. For instinct is moulded on the 
very form of life ; and the order of its knowledge 
belongs to the order of the vital, whereas the know- 
ledge of intelligence and the intellect always deals 
with the materialized, the spacialized, translating 
everything into the order of the inert. Hence the 
intellect is characterized by a natural inability to 
comprehend life. It can only deal with the material- 
ized products of life. But we normally think in an 
atmosphere of intelligence ; and it is this that prevents 
us from grasping the inner meaning and essential 
character either of life or of instinct. Even M. Bergson 
himself has again and again, to use modes of expres- 
sion which, till one has in some degree mastered his 
whole thesis, are apt to lead to grave misunderstanding. 
Let me exemplify. The solitary wasp, Ammophila, 
stings its caterpillar prey in the nerve-centres along 
the ventral line of the body. Dr. and Mrs. Peckham 
have, indeed, shown that the instinctive accuracy, 
with resulting paralysis and not death, has been 
exaggerated. But this does not much matter. 
Relying on M. Fabre's observations, M. Bergson 
says : — " When a paralysing wasp stings its victim in 
just those parts where the nervous centres lie, so as 
to render it motionless without killing it, it acts like 
a learned entomologist and a skilful surgeon rolled 
into one " (p. 153). On first reading this passage one 
supposes that, though the knowledge is not gained by 



224 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

the wasp as it is gained by the entomologist and the 
surgeon, yet it is like their knowledge. One is 
perhaps influenced by what one has been taught by 
many writers on instinct with regard to inherited 
experience, the implication being that the experience 
has been won by the race, as we gain experience, and 
has been transmitted in perfected form. That, how- 
ever, is not M. Bergson's view. The knowledge is 
different in kind and comes in a wholly different way. 
Hear what M. Bergson says, some thirty pages later 
(p. 183). "The whole difficulty comes from our 
desire to express the knowledge of the Hymenoptera 
in terms of intelligence. It is this that compels us to 
compare the Ammophila with the entomologist, who 
knows the caterpillar as he knows everything else — 
from the outside without having on his part a special 
or vital interest. The Ammophila, we imagine, must 
learn one by one, like the entomologist, the positions 
of the nerve-centres of the caterpillar — must acquire 
at least the practical knowledge of these positions by 
trying the effects of his sting. But there is no need 
for such a view if we suppose a sympathy (in the 
etymological sense of the word) between the 
Ammophila and his victim, which teaches it from 
within, so to say, the vulnerability of the caterpillar. 
This feeling of vulnerability might owe nothing to 
outward perception, but result from the mere presence 
of the Ammophila and the caterpillar considered no 
longer as two organisms but as two activities. It 
would express, in a concrete form, the relation of one 
to the other." Do we find this suggestion of a 
specialized and selective sympathetic rapport between 
life and life more akin to poetry than to science ? I 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 225 

am inclined to think that M. Bergson would agree ; 
he would assuredly agree if we substitute philosophy 
for poetry. " Certainly," he says, " a scientific theory 
cannot appeal to considerations of this kind. It must 
not put action before organization, sympathy before 
perception and [intellectual] knowledge. But once 
more, either philosophy has nothing to see here, or its 
r61e begins where that of science ends" (p. 183). 

The burden of M. Bergson's message is that a 
philosophy of life is not, and cannot be the outcome 
of a science which deals with the organism, a science 
built up of concepts based on intellectual snap-shots 
in the world of space. By the cinematographical 
method we are bound to get a mechanical result ; and 
that is what the intellect, as such, always provides. 
It is incapable (as defined by M. Bergson) of providing 
anything else. He admits, nay, contends, that 
" organization can only be studied scientifically if the 
organized body has first been likened to a machine. 
. . . This is the standpoint of science. Quite different 
in our opinion is that of philosophy " (p. 98). 

We must take M. Bergson on his own terms. In 
his philosophy life is extra-mundane — the Source of 
all process. It is beyond the reach of science; the 
intellect can nowise grasp it. But by intuition, which 
is instinct raised to its highest power, it is aware of 
itself ; and by sympathy it is directly aware of other 
process, most directly of other process in living organ- 
isms. A difficult concept this — if indeed that can be 
called a concept which belongs to the antithetical kind 
of knowledge within which clean-cut concepts have no 
place. M. Bergson does his best to help us to live our- 
selves into his mode of thinking. He therefore appeals 
Q 



226 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

to experience as experienczVz^. "Though instinct," 
he says, " is not within the domain of intelligence, it 
is not situated beyond the limits of mind. In the 
phenomena of feeling, in unreflecting sympathy and 
antipathy, we experience in ourselves — though under 
a much vaguer form and one too much permeated 
with intelligence, — something of what must happen in 
the consciousness of an insect acting by instinct. . . . 
Intelligence is, before anything else, the faculty of 
relating one point of space with another, one material 
object to another ; it applies to all things, but remains 
outside them ; and of a deep cause it perceives only 
the effects spread out side by side. Whatever be the 
force that is at work in the genesis of the nervous 
system of the caterpillar, to our eyes and our intelli- 
gence it is only a juxtaposition of nerves and nerve- 
centres. It is true that we thus get at the whole 
outer effect of it. The Ammophila no doubt discerns 
but a very little of that force, just what concerns 
itself ; but at least it discerns it from within, quite 
otherwise than by a process of [intellectual] knowledge 
— by an intuition (Jived rather than represented), 
which is probably like what we call divining 
sympathy" (pp. 184-5). 

Here we are at the very heart of M. Bergson's 
doctrine of instinct. " Instinct is sympathy. If this 
sympathy could extend its object and also reflect 
upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations 
— just as intelligence, developed and disciplined, 
guides us into matter. For — we cannot too often 
repeat it — intelligence and instinct are turned in 
opposite directions, the former towards inert matter, 
the latter towards life. ... It is towards the very 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 227 

inwardness of life that intuition leads us — by intuition 
I mean," says M. Bergson, " instinct that has become 
disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon 
its object and of enlarging it indefinitely" (p. 186). 

I cannot follow up in detail M. Bergson's treatment 
of the higher modes of intuition. Something must, 
however, be said on the subject since it throws further 
light on his doctrine of instinct with which we are 
here concerned. Remembering (i) that instinct is 
moulded on life, (2) that life is fundamentally im- 
pulsion, (3) that this impulsion is of the psychological 
order, (4) that instinct is sympathy, and (5) that 
intuition is instinct become self-conscious, as a form 
of enjoyment leading us to the very inwardness of 
life ; — remembering these points, we find that in the 
operations of the human mind the essential feature 
of intuition is that it is vital impulsion, diverse from, 
and yet always co-operating with, the intellect. We 
find that pure intuition, external or internal, is that of 
an undivided continuity. 1 It is intelligence that 
breaks up this continuity into elements laid side by 
side. It is forced to do so by the needs of practical 
life and, later, by the needs of scientific thought. But 
" by unmaking that which these needs have made, we 
may restore to intuition its original purity and so 
recover contact with the real." 2 As Mr. Wildon 
Carr, interpreting M. Bergson, says 3 : — " Beside the 
intellect and implied in our knowledge of its limit- 
ations, is a power of intuition, that is of apprehending 
reality not limited by the intellectual categories, and 

1 " Matter and Memory," p. 239. 

2 Ibid. p. 241. 

3 "British journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 236. 



228 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

this reality is the living activity itself apprehended as 
a real duration." We get at this activity intuitively 
in the midst of the process of experienc/;^, and we 
feel that it lies behind the items experience and 
susceptible of intellectual treatment. " Any one," 
says M. Bergson in a passage which Mr. Lindsay 
quotes l : — u Any one who has been engaged in literary 
production, knows perfectly well that after long study 
has been given to the subject, when all documents 
have been collected and all sketches made, one thing 
more is necessary — an effort, often painful, to set one- 
self in the heart of the subject and get from it an 
impulse as profound as possible, when there is nothing 
more to be done than to follow it. This impulse, once 
received, sets the spirit on a path where it finds again 
all the information it had collected and a thousand 
other details. The impulse develops itself, analyses 
itself in expressions, whose enumeration might be 
infinite ; the further you go on, the more is revealed ; 
never can you say everything that is to be said ; and 
yet if you turn back to apprehend the impulse that 
is behind you, it is hidden from you." Hidden, that is, 
I take it, from the intellect which deals with the 
multiplicity of things given to experience — the 
experience — but revealed in the process of ex- 
perience^* of enjoying — revealed through intuition. 
For intuition is, it seems, both the consciousness of 
the vital impetus involved in the higher mental 
activity, and the realization of this impetus as the 
source of all invention. When once the profound 
impetus has been given, the application may be left to 

1 "The Philosophy of Bergson," pp. 237-8. Quoted from "The 
Introduction to Metaphysic" (1903). 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 229 

the intellect working in cinematographical fashion 
with its symbols and its concepts. To intuition we 
owe " all that is greatest in the exact sciences as well 
as all that deserves to live in metaphysic." But " if 
intuition originated the invention it was the symbol 
alone that made the application possible " ; l and the 
symbol is the tool that intelligence fashions for its 
use. 

It is, I conceive, through internal intuition that we 
have our knowledge of experienc/;^ — of thinking' — of 
that aspect of experience which, as I urged at the 
close of the last chapter, can never become the object 
of intelligent knowledge — can never (save through 
some symbolic expression) take its place among the 
" eds " of experience. It is, I conceive, through the 
external intuition which M. Bergson calls sympathy, 
and never by any intellectual process, save through 
some symbolism verbal or other (the word external 
being itself, for M. Bergson, an intellectual concept 
since all intuition is interpenetrating) — it is, I say, 
through sympathy alone that we can have intuitive 
knowledge of the mental processes of our fellow men 
or of animals. Such intuitive sympathy is the special 
characteristic of the artist ; it is the parent of the 
animism of primitive times and primitive races. But 
from what less self-conscious form are this intuition 
and this sympathy evolved ? From the instinct 
which, in far-away times past, was interpenetrating 
with, and scarcely differentiated from, intelligence. 
The instinctive knowledge of the animal is of the same 
order as our own intuitive knowledge but always 

1 Quoted from " Introduction to Metaphysic," by Lindsay, op. cit., 
p. 225. 



230 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

in the evolutionary process, specialized and selectively 
concentrated on those objects, or rather those 
processes, which are provocative of instinctive 
behaviour. Such I believe to be the kernel of M. 
Bergson's doctrine of instinct. 

It is no doubt possible, nay, probable, that I have 
selectively absorbed those parts of his doctrine which 
appeal to my own modes of thought. But I elected 
the stream of sympathy rather than that of criticism 
and naturally emphasize that part of his treatment 
with which I can sympathize. I trust, however, that I 
have not unintentionally mis-represented M. Bergson's 
central idea. It now remains for me to show how 
far my own interpretation differs from or accords 
with that which I find in M. Bergson's pages. 

In the first place I must set aside all the pure 
memory business, all reference to extra-mundane life. 
With these I have no concern. Of course this ruling 
out of the character of Hamlet from M. Bergson's 
philosophical drama leaves the play a maimed and 
mutilated travesty which the author would not 
acknowledge as representative of his work. I seek, 
however, the intra-mundane basis which remains when 
the extra-mundane elements have been removed. 
Were there no such solid basis I feel convinced that 
the fabric of the philosophy could not stand. Now, for 
M. Bergson the characteristic feature of instinct is that 
it is a form of knowledge which has an inward 
direction, lifewards — opposite to that of the intellect 
which is ever directed outwards so as to apprehend 
objects in space. Even as sympathy instinct is an 
inner feeling. The Ammophila is taught from within 
of the vulnerability of the caterpillar ; and this 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 931 

instinctive rapport " might owe nothing whatever to 
outward perception." That seems to me to be an 
extravagant position. I question whether any form 
of sympathy can be said to owe nothing whatever to 
outward perception : it is only called into being in 
alliance with outward perception. In any case as I 
interpret instinctive experience it has both an outward 
and an inward direction — an inner awareness as the 
enjoyment of experiencing — an outward reference in 
as much as an external situation is experienced. I 
freely admit that at the instinctive stage of mental 
development these are but little differentiated ; indeed 
the difference of reference can only be apprehended 
through reflective thought. But M. Bergson's instinct 
(inner direction) and his intelligence (outward 
direction) are given together. And I should urge that 
the business direction of what I should call instinctive 
experience is towards the experience — not towards 
the experienczVzg; though both are given at the same 
time. The practical reference when a chick is 
pecking at small objects is to the grains or maggots 
not to the enjoyment, though that is present and 
essential to the conscious relationship. For me the 
difference between instinctive experience and the 
supervening phase of intelligence is that, in the latter, 
pre-perceptions, due to the revival of previous ex- 
perience, are present and play their part in determining 
the behaviour which is thereby rendered intelligent. 
But in intelligent experience, at this early stage of its 
genesis, both directions, inner and outward, are still 
present. There is that which is intelligently ex- 
perienced and there is an enjoyment of intelligently 
experiencing. And this is carried up, in further 



232 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

development, to the highest limits of our intellectual 
life. There, too, we have the intellectually experienced 
concepts and the like, and the enjoyment of intellectual 
experiencing. 

Nothing can be experienced, by arthropod or 
vertebrate, without experiencing ; experiencing is 
impossible with nothing experienced. None the less, 
if we may trust our own experience (and what else can 
we trust?) there may be a marked difference of 
emphasis. In our intellectual life we may so dwell 
on the aspect of the known that the process of know- 
ing becomes merely a background accompaniment. 
In our emotional life the tide of feeling may rise to 
such a level of intensity that our whole being 
seems concentrated at the experiencing pole. This 
variation of emphasis is a familiar fact of our daily 
life. It may be that in animal life — in that of the 
arthropod for example— the emphasis on feeling, on 
enjoyment pleasurable or the reverse, predominates. 
Who can say ? Probably nowhere, save in human 
thought, is the emphasis on the intellectually known 
and knowable, so highly differentiated until it 
culminates in the predominantly intellectualist 
temper of the man of science. And nowhere, save 
in human thought, is experiencing itself in some 
measure translated into terms of the known and 
knowable, so that we can discuss it in conceptual 
language. Thus we reach the paradox that internal 
intuition and the external intuition of sympathy 
are dealt with in a manner so splendidly intellectual 
as that which M. Bergson employs to win us over to 
the view that they are not susceptible of intellectual 
treatment ! 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 233 

But it is only by putting ourselves outside the 
process of experiencing that we can deal with it in 
terms of intellectual knowledge. We are forced to 
view it as if from without in order to give it a place 
in our ideal construction of the natural order. We 
live in the conscious relationship and, as we live, it is 
only by intuition that we are aware of its enjoyment 
direction. But in interpreting our own experience 
we stand outside it and view it thus translated in 
relative detachment from the process of knowing it. 
The correlative process is, however, never absent. 
No percepts are possible without the process of 
perceiving ; no concepts without the process of 
conceiving ; no synthesis of experienced items is 
possible without the synthetic process of experiencing. 
In all phases of mental life — in arthropods or verte- 
brates, — instinct and intelligence (in M. Bergson's 
sense of the words) intuition and intellect, are 
the inner and outer directions of the self-same 
experience. 

It is part of M. Bergson's method to found on 
the results of analysis a sundering of orders of 
existence. An analysis of natural relationships leads 
us to distinguish the conscious and the organic from 
the mechanical and the physical. This is straight- 
way made the basis of a separation of two wholly 
different orders, that of the vital and that of the 
inert. Again : some measure of permanence and 
some measure of change are given together in 
perceptual experience ; forthwith the permanence is 
bestowed unreservedly on the order of the inert ; 
the change is restricted to the order of the vital. 
But all change involves time-relationships ; and so 



234 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

duration becomes the sole prerogative of the vital 
and the conscious, and the material universe, as such, 
is left timeless and irretrievably static. Intuition and 
intellect are blended in mental life ; but the former 
is moulded on the vital order which can be known 
through it alone ; the latter deals only with static 
snap-shots and cannot comprehend life or process. 
Thus are the results of analysis hypostatized in 
M. Bergson's philosophy. 

Now I conceive that M. Bergson is right in 
contending that time and process, change and motion 
are primarily given in experience through intuition 
and enjoyment. We are thus aware of them at 
first hand. But is he right in restricting time and 
process and movement to the so-called vital order 
and leaving the material universe timeless, processless, 
and immobile ? I believe that he is wholly wrong. 
Though we may know them outside us only in 
second-hand reflection ; there they are to be thus 
known. Let us grant that abstract science, the 
ultimate triumph of intellectual procedure according 
to M. Bergson, deals with static snap-shots. As we 
shall see in the next chapter, mathematicians treat 
the mechanics of motion in terms of configurations 
of particles, these particles occupying a series of 
selected positions ; and any such position is a strictly 
instantaneous cinematograph picture in thought. 
No doubt each position is that which is occupied in 
a given instant of time ; but it is in what M. Bergson 
would call a spatialized time — a position on a time- 
chart represented by a point on a line in space which 
only symbolizes time for the intellect. It, too, is a 
snap-shot. There is no flow in a point ; the continuous 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 235 

progress of real duration is eliminated. Well and 
good. The method is triumphantly successful. But 
when we are thinking of the process which is thus 
dealt with in snap-shots, we think through the 
positions, and the process of thought restores the 
real movement, the real duration, the time-flow, 
which had been eliminated for the purposes of 
rigidly scientific treatment. Yes ! says M. Bergson. 
But this movement, this duration, is wholly within 
the order of the vital ; it is movement and duration 
of our thinking. And in so far as there is real 
process outside us, we come into touch with it, 
through sympathetic intuition, as part of the order 
of the vital — the Life-impetus of the universe. Now 
for us, as for M. Bergson there is real movement and 
real duration in the process, the products of which are 
experienced. For him, however, the reality is in the 
order of the vital artificially sundered from the order of 
the inert. For us the reality is in the constitution of 
nature, many of the processes of which are not what 
we should term vital. They are inorganic processes, 
but none the less exhibiting real changes in time. 

But how do we get at the movement and the 
duration of any process which is outside us, since the 
only process we can enjoy is that of experiencing? 
M. Bergson says that we do so by sympathy. I 
should adapt his thought to my own interpretation 
as follows : — We are privileged centres of relationship 
within a relational context. Of any other centre of 
relationships, say another man or animal, we can 
only realize the nature of its process, by reading 
ourselves into its very heart. The more of the artist 
there is in us, the greater the measure of our success. 



236 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

For in artistic appreciation intuition and sympathy 
are all-important. We can only realize, and that 
imperfectly, the instinctive relationships of bird or 
bee by putting ourselves in the place of the organism 
which is behaving instinctively — by feeling its very 
life. In some such form I can accept M. Bergson's 
teaching — But how do we come to do it ? Is it 
through strictly intellectual procedure, the drawing 
of logical inference in explicit fashion. M. Bergson 
says No. And here again I can in large measure 
agree. Its roots surely lie deeper than that. It is 
through no such intellectual and logical procedure 
that the cat in some way and in some degree comes 
to realize the nature of its kitten, — dimly and dumbly 
no doubt, but still effectively for practical behaviour. 
The work of logic and the intellect, in us as inter- 
preters, is concerned rather with the reasonable 
restriction of a sympathetic tendency which is far 
more primitive than scientific inference. 

Does it not, however, seem somewhat strained 
and extravagant to say that we sympathize with the 
processes of inorganic nature ? Is not this merely a 
poetical metaphor ? Can we enter sympathetically 
into the process of crystallization ? Can we 
sympathize with the solar system ? In a sense I 
believe we can, and must do so, even to attain the 
end of scientific interpretation. If we would follow 
any movement or process in thought we must always 
to some extent identify ourselves with the process, 
must live its flow, must get in some measure 
inside it, if we are adequately to realize its nature. 
" How marvellously you seem to know exactly how 
your motor-car will behave at any moment and 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 237 

just what it wants," said a friend to a skilled 
expert. " I do it by instinct," was the reply ; " but 
then you see I am a motor-car ! " Some such 
reading of oneself into the very heart of one's 
object of thought is the secret of success in all 
effective interpretation even of inorganic processes. 
You must in some fashion feel the polarities of the 
molecules in the crystal, feel the double refraction 
of the light that passes through it, feel the electrical 
strains of the ether you invent. It is when a man 
of science knows the process he seeks to elucidate, 
as it were from within, that he shoots ahead of 
his fellows who know only its outer aspect. This 
is part of his intuition ; his touch of genius. Is 
this a matter of the intellect as such ? Unquestion- 
ably in such cases it is, highly intellectualized. 
But it is probably only the supreme development 
of a process which permeates the whole of experience, 
of that which some psychologists term the empathic 
tendency ; a tendency to be in some measure the 
object of close attention ; a tendency for the 
enjoyment of experiencing to diffuse itself over, or 
to insinuate itself into, that which is experienced in 
the focus of perception ; a tendency which, as I 
said above, is at the root of the animism of primitive 
races. One is forced to put the matter rather vaguely 
and picturesquely. As M. Bergson would say, it is 
not readily snap-shotted by the intellect. But if we 
ourselves endeavour to sympathize with his thought, 
such considerations seem to justify his view that 
intuition, sympathy, and instinct, in his sense of the 
term, point inwards to the reality of process, rather 
than outwards to its materialized products. 



238 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

As a rider to our discussion of M. Bergson's 
doctrine of instinct and intuition we may devote a 
brief space to Dr. C. S. Myers' suggestive thesis 
to which allusion was made in an earlier chapter. 
According to M. Bergson, as we have seen, the 
province of instinct and intuition is to apprehend 
the inner nature of process, of life and consciousness, 
while the province of intelligence and the intellect 
is to know the external order of the inert. " If 
the consciousness that slumbers in instinct should 
awake," he tells us ; " if we could ask and it could 
reply, it would give up to us the most intimate 
secrets of life." According to M. Bergson instinct 
and intuition are moulded on life and feel its inner 
pulses ; but intelligence and the intellect are 
moulded on the mechanical and the inert, and 
mechanize all that they touch. Dr. Myers on the 
other hand inverts this relationship to the inner 
life and to objective interpretation. "According to 
my view, and to my use of the words," he says, 1 
" instinct regarded from within becomes intelligence ; 
intelligence regarded from without becomes instinct." 
And he correlates instinct with a mechanistic 
interpretation ; intelligence with a finalistic inter- 
pretation. According to him instinct and intelligence 
are different aspects, outer and inner, of one and the 
same mental process. "We ought," he says (pp. 
267-8), "to speak, not of instinct and intelligence, 
but of instinct-intelligence treating the two as one 
indivisible mental function. . . . Regarded from the 
objective standpoint instinct-intelligence appears as 
instinct ; regarded from the subjective standpoint it 
1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol iii., p. 218. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF INSTINCT 239 

appears as intelligence." Here we have a use of 
the term instinct which is very different from, 
almost diametrically opposite to, that which M. 
Bergson has striven to render current. We must 
remember, however, that as things now are, no 
two writers use the term in quite the same sense ! 

From some passages it seems as if the antithesis 
which Dr. Myers seeks to emphasize is that between 
the physiological and the mental. For he says (p. 
270) : — " Throughout the psychical world there is 
but one physiological mechanism; there is but one 
psychological function — instinct-intelligence." Here 
instinct appears to be correlated with physiological 
mechanism ; and intelligence with psychological 
function. I am doubtful, however, whether I have 
quite grasped Dr. Myers' full meaning ; for he 
speaks (p. 269) of instincts as "endowed with per- 
ceptual and conative dispositions." But if instinct 
is the physiological aspect of the two-faced unity, 
the propriety of applying the terms perceptual and 
conative to this aspect is questionable — so question- 
able that I fear that I may not be giving a correct 
summary of Dr. Myers' thesis. 

In any case, if I understand him aright, the 
highest development of human intelligence is but 
one aspect of that which has a strictly correlative 
instinctive aspect. And this is brought into relation 
with a philosophical doctrine of the relation of 
mechanism to finalism. Dr. Myers advocates the 
thorough-going acceptance of a mechanical aspect 
of all that, in its psychological aspect, he regards 
as finalistic. " Some superhuman being," he says 
(p. 207), " would as surely find our human intelligence 



240 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

determined by mechanism as we commonly believe 
the mental activity of animals to be determined 
by instinct." We must not, however, infer that Dr. 
Myers would regard such mechanism as other than 
the phenomenal appearance of the underlying 
purpose of which it is the expression. His 
philosophy is essentially finalistic ; " for ends exist 
not only in life but throughout the universe " 
(p. 217). The mechanism of instinct is only an 
aspect of that fundamental finalism which is 
characteristic of intelligence. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FINALISM AND MECHANISM: BODY AND 
MIND 

AT the close of the last chapter we saw that Dr. 
Myers regards the antithesis between instinct 
and intelligence as an example of the wider antithesis 
between mechanism and finalism. " So far as instinc- 
tive behaviour," he says, " can be regarded from the 
standpoint of the individual experience of the 
organism, it appears, however imperfectly, as intelli- 
gent, — characterized by finalism. So far as intelligent 
behaviour can be regarded from the standpoint of 
observing the conduct of other organisms, it appears, 
however imperfectly, as instinctive — characterized by 
mechanism." Thus for him intelligence and instinct, 
finalism and mechanism, are equally true and valid 
interpretations of the same problem regarded from 
different standpoints. And the broader antithesis 
is all-embracing in its range ; " for end exists not 
only in Life but throughout the Universe, if only 
we view the Universe as a huge organism }>1 (p. 217). 
The last sentence suggests the doctrine of panpsychism 
— to be briefly considered in the sequel. Our present 
concern is with finalism and mechanism. We will 
deal with finalism first. 

1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p, 209. 
R 241 



242 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

What from the empirical point of view does 
finalism mean ? It means, I suppose, that in some 
cases we can with advantage interpret a process as 
proceeding to or towards an end which we can foresee. 
In what cases ? In those in which we have become 
acquainted with natural routine. Apart from routine 
we have -no data on which to base any anticipation 
of end. Now there is plenty of routine in the inorganic 
world which we might interpret in this way. But as 
a matter of fact we seldom do so. Nor do we use the 
word purposive in such connexions. We do not 
speak of earth-sculpture as the end of denudation ; 
nor do we speak of the process of denudation as 
purposive. When we have occasion to look ahead 
we are content to predict future stages of routine, 
without introducing the finalistic concept of end or 
purpose. 

We will pass at once, then, to the sphere of 
organic life. Here we do commonly employ finalistic 
terms. We say that flight is the end for which 
wings are developed ; the secretion of bile, one of 
the ends which the liver subserves. The whole con- 
ception of adaptation in biology, with its undertone 
of utility, is a conception implying an end to be 
attained. I have myself again and again spoken of 
instinctive behaviour as purposive and laid stress on 
its survival value — that is its value to the end of 
escaping elimination. 

Now it may be urged that, from the strictly 
scientific point of view, all these modes of expression 
are unsatisfactory and misleading if they imply that 
in any single case the present is conditioned by the 
future or the earlier stage by the later. For the 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 243 

future is not yet in being, and the later stage is 
non-existent till it is actually reached. Adaptive 
behaviour, it will be said, is in all cases to be 
explained as a heritage of the past ; the well-adapted 
parents have survived and have transmitted to their 
offspring the so-called potentiality of like adaptation. 
This potentiality is just the present structure and 
constitution of the organism. All this is true enough 
and sufficiently obvious to all those who have devoted 
any thought to the subject. And yet there is surely 
something about the peculiar nature of biological 
phenomena which justifies the conception of end or 
purpose — a conception which is current among 
biologists of all schools. What is that something? 
Clearly the correlated routine which we sum up under 
the term heredity. 

Now we must distinguish between the end fore- 
seen, however dimly, by a conscious organism, and 
the end foreseen by the biologist who studies the 
organism. The former is a pre-perceptive or anticipa- 
tory conscious relationship developed in the intelligent 
organism ; the latter is an anticipation in the mind 
of the observer who interprets. The former may, 
perhaps, not unreasonably for our present purpose, 
be excluded in the case of plants. Reading our 
anticipation into that which we interpret we say, 
that the acorn contains the potentiality of the oak- 
tree ; that its end is to become an oak ; or perhaps, 
more generally, that it is part of the purpose of nature 
that seeds should develop into plants, shrubs, or trees. 
And we foresee that any given seed will grow into the 
likeness of its parents — a likeness which is substan- 
tially perfect, if for the present we disregard all 



244 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

variations and mutations. How have we come to 
know this ? In brief by the study of life-history in 
a series of affiliated individuals m> n, o, and p. Such 
study reveals routine. We find that, in them, the 
tune of development is played again and again 
da capo. And having learnt the tune in m i n, o, 
and p, we foresee the sequence of the organic melody 
and harmony in q as soon as a few chords have been 
played. Then we can say that the opening bars are 
significant of the whole piece — may even say that 
the simple organic ditty of mucor or the complex 
symphony of quercus is the end for which the opening 
bars of development exist. But we can only do so 
in so far as history repeats itself; and history only 
repeats itself so far as the constitution of q, and the 
conditions at any given stage of its development, 
resemble the constitution of p and o and the condi- 
tions at like stages of their development. Any 
"prospective value," apart from constitution and 
conditions actually present, is entirely in the mind 
of the interpreter. 

But here the teleological vitalists will demur. 
If Dr. Driesch be their spokesman he will urge 
that we are wholly ignoring the really important 
question : — Why the sequence in any given case is 
what, as a matter of fact, we observe it to be : we are 
ignoring his reply to this question, namely, that 
entelechy is the ground and Source of development and 
organization. With entelechy as Source I have here 
no concern ; we do not seek the why of any natural 
process in this sense. And to entelechy as ground 
I raise no serious objection. It is just the inherited 
constitution under another name. If it be found 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 245 

convenient to name the ground of organization in 
yeast or amoeba, in alga or mollusk, in oak-tree or 
man, its entelechy, I do not see what reasonable 
objection can be taken ; so long as scientific interpre- 
tation is furthered, and so long as it avowedly labels 
the specific characteristic of processes which are just 
part of the natural order ; so long, in short, as it is 
not hypostatized as a controlling entity. 

A little way back we disregarded the occurrence 
of variations or mutations. Now, granted that both 
modes of organic change obtain ; granted that biolo- 
gists will some day be able to elucidate more clearly 
the conditions of their natural origin ; granted that 
mutations occur beyond the field of hybridization ; 
granted that in some more or less modified form the 
Mendelian laws may be fully established ; nay, more, 
granted that it may hereafter be proved that, quite 
apart from natural selection, in which the environment 
is so potent a factor, organic evolution occurs along 
lines determined by the intrinsic constitution of the 
evolving organisms. Let all this be granted in a 
spirit of generous concession. We are indeed 
granting more than, in my opinion, is at present 
proven ; still I see no reason why all this should not 
be conceded for the sake of argument. For the sake 
of what argument ? The argument for finalism. And 
what does this argument come to ? This : — that 
in organic nature up to date we find definite tendencies 
in apparently determinate directions ; and that we 
may, in some cases, foretell from the trend of the 
evolutionary curve up to date, its probable course in 
the future. But the natural order is throughout 
replete with determinate tendencies of such a character 



246 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

that we can with some confidence predict what will 
occur if things go on in the time to come as they 
have gone on in the time that is past, wherein our 
observations have been carried out. Such finalism, 
then, is really nothing other than our old friend 
scientific prediction under another name. 

But what if the variations or mutations are 
genuinely new departures — are creative, as M. 
Bergson would say ? What if they are unforeseeable 
and unpredictable because they are off the line of 
previous routine ? I have already urged that this 
would not be a matter for surprise, since nature is 
replete with events which could not be predicted 
because the routine of their occurrence had not yet 
been presented for observation — the appropriate 
conditions had not yet occurred. But surely such 
unpredictable new departures cannot for one 
moment be regarded as affording any evidence for 
finalism, at our present stage of its consideration, 
since their essential characteristic lies in the fact 
that the end cannot be foreseen. For empirical treat- 
ment finalistic interpretation is based on routine : 
non-routine events wholly escape the meshes of .its 
net. 

So far we have considered a finalistic interpreta- 
tion of processes in which we have assumed the 
conscious relationship to be absent. We have con- 
sidered purposive processes — that is, processes which 
we interpret as proceeding to an end which we 
can foresee. Only where an intelligent being is 
guided in virtue of the presence of conscious relation- 
ships towards an end which he can dimly or clearly 
foresee do we have finalistic behaviour or conduct 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM Ml 

and not merely a finalistic interpretation — purpose- 
ful behaviour, and not merely behaviour which we 
may regard as purposive like many of the tropisms 
in plants and lowly animals. 

Now there can surely be no doubt that in human 
life, where elementary meaning for practical behaviour 
has risen to significance for conceptual thought and 
conduct, wherein interest is far-reaching and conative 
process has become fully volitional, wherein the out- 
look towards the possible or probable future has 
become open-eyed and rational ; — there can surely 
be no doubt that here purpose and end are concepts 
essential for adequate interpretation of the facts. 
Nor can there be any doubt that what we may fairly 
speak of as the same end may be reached by different 
means. This is a salient feature] of the higher 
mental life. It is not distinctive of the higher mental 
life, nor of intelligent process. It is seen in in- 
stinctive behaviour, and is abundantly illustrated in 
biology where somewhat similar structural features — 
such as those of the eye in vertebrates and in some 
mollusks — have been reached by different evolu- 
tionary routes, and where the regeneration of lost 
parts takes place in diverse manners and even in 
some cases, it seems, from tissues of different em- 
bryonic origin. I do not even say that this apparent 
identity of effect reached through a series of 
different conditions is restricted to the mental and the 
organic spheres. Even in the inorganic realm, 
though we may assert with some confidence that the 
same assemblage of conditions will always, in a 
system similarly constituted, be the antecedent of the 
same effect, we cannot convert this proposition, and 



248 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

say that an apparently identical effect is always the 
consequence of the same assemblage of conditions. 
Still in the inorganic world we can work back from 
effect to correlated conditions with much greater 
security than we can in the realm of the living, where 
such a method of procedure is proverbially insecure. 
Nor is this surprising when one remembers how com- 
plexity and unity are combined in the organism as 
they are combined nowhere else in nature ; and when 
one remembers that stability in constitution amid 
varying conditions has, perhaps more than anything 
else, the hall-mark of survival value ; is, perhaps more 
than anything else, what we should expect to find 
under vigorous natural selection. Nowhere is com- 
plexity in unity carried to higher level than in man ; 
nowhere is constitutional stability (which we com- 
monly speak of as the triumph of character over 
circumstances) more pronounced ; nowhere does the 
end more markedly dominate the means. In any 
case it is a sufficiently familiar fact that what we 
roughly call the same end may be attained by very 
different means. 

But when we say that in human life the present 
is big with the future, which it will beget, that the 
child has the potentialities which will be realized in 
later years, that the end in view precedes and 
dominates the devising of means to its attainment, do 
we mean, can we seriously mean, that the present is 
determined by the future ? The future is not yet in 
being. How can that which is non-existent deter- 
mine conduct, or thought, or anything else ? It is an 
inversion of the natural order of sequence to speak, 
in any natural sense, of the future as a condition of 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 249 

present process. The true statement of the matter is 
surely this : — That among the conditions, then and 
there actually present, are certain anticipations of, or 
desires for, a further development more or less clearly 
foreseen as possibilities in the future ; and that just 
in so far as these are present may we speak of a 
purpose and end and so-called final cause. Some 
form of at least pre-perception, if not of definite 
anticipation, is essential. If this and nothing more 
than this be finalism, then are we all finalists in our 
interpretation of human life. And there is nothing 
to differentiate the natural course of process in this 
case from that in any other case, save only the 
presence among the existent relationships of the 
psychological factors which we name prospective 
significance and interest. These, of course, do 
differentiate ; and that in a most important manner, 
which must nowise be ignored, but which must just 
be accepted where pre-perceptive relationships have 
been established and highly developed. And such 
conscious relationships count, really count, every 
whit as much as any other natural relationships. 
They are not merely epiphenomenal phosphorescence ; 
they are real conditions of the course of process, both 
mental and bodily. 

Now, wherever we have evidence of conscious 
relationships with prospective reference functioning 
in this way, we have a genuinely teleological factor. 
It is just because I am not satisfied that there is 
evidence of such conscious relationships in the life of 
plants, in the development of the embryo, in the 
reflex actions of the spinal animal, and in instinctive 
behaviour from the biological standpoint, that, as at 



250 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

present advised, I cannot accept a finalistic interpre- 
tation of such processes. But others, as we shall 
presently have occasion to show, accept it, and base 
their whole interpretation of organic process upon it. 

And what about universal finalism ? This implies 
not only a conscious relationship, but one of un- 
limited range, and one that embraces the whole not 
yet of the future. Am I putting the matter fairly in 
stating it thus? If with Dr. Myers we view the 
universe as a huge organism which embraces the 
whole duration of the natural order from start to 
finish within a single and immediate span of 
consciousness, then a fore-knowledge of end would 
qualify the whole of consciousness and be a condition 
of natural process. Would this satisfy the universal 
finalist? I think not. Does not such finalism 
generally, if not always, involve the concept of 
Source ? Will not the finalist say that the conscious- 
ness of the universe is not only aware of the end as a 
condition of the direction taken by process, but is 
also, and essentially, the Agency through which the 
whole natural order is made to achieve that end ? If 
this be so, then, in so far as universal finalism 
involves the concept of Source or Agency it is out- 
side the sphere of our considerations here. We could 
here only accept universal teleology as an expression 
of universal intelligibility. 

Antithetical to finalistic interpretation is mech- 
anistic interpretation. I feel sure that finalists 
will regard much that I have written in preceding 
paragraphs as a vain and futile attempt to interpret 
the evidence for finalism in terms of mere mechanism. 
The term mechanism, and the adjectives mechanistic 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 251 

and mechanical are, however, somewhat ambiguous. 
" Mechanics/' said Kirchoff, " is the science of motion. 
We define as its object the complete description in 
the simplest possible manner of such motions as 
occur in nature." We may here, I take it, regard the 
laws of equilibrium as special cases which can be 
brought under the laws of motion. Now motion is 
a concept reached by the scientific analysis and re- 
synthesis of certain changes in the routine of the 
phenomenal world which are presented to observa- 
tion. It is essential to remember that mechanics, as 
a science of motion, is a product of ideal construction ; 
it furnishes a very much simplified conceptual map 
or model which enables us to interpret observable 
phenomena. And as the motion itself is purely 
conceptual, so, too, for mechanics, is that which 
moves ; whether it be an indefinitely complex object, 
such as a planet, or a molecule, or an atom, or an 
electron, or a point. These are statistical units 
employed as occasion arises, and as may be 
convenient in relation to the problem in hand ; and 
they are employed within the conceptual scheme of 
the thought-model. Within this scheme, the ideal 
motions of these purely ideal products of scientific 
thought (particles, let us call them) are dealt with in 
terms of velocity, and of acceleration as a measure of 
change in velocity. And the acceleration-measure 
may be applied either (i) to the quickening or slow- 
ing off of velocity in the same direction, or (2) to the 
changes of that direction. The velocity of a particle 
ideally isolated at any given moment is the net result 
of the whole of its mechanical history. If, however, 
the particle be not isolated, but is one among a 



252 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

number of others which are related within a con- 
figuration, then, for mechanics, its acceleration is 
strictly correlated with, or is a function of, its relation 
to all the other particles in the configuration in 
accordance with the constitution of that configuration. 
We need not trouble about any mathematical diffi- 
culties in calculating the acceleration values. 
Theoretically, if we know the existing positions and 
the velocities of all the particles within a configura- 
tion as a mechanical system in any two moments, 
and if we know the laws of the type of configuration, 
that is, its constitution, then we can predict their 
velocities and positions in any succeeding moment. 
It should be noted that this statement includes all 
changes of direction as well as changes of speed. 
The assertion is often made that changes of direction 
may occur independently of mechanical relationships. 
This, however, is never the case within the con- 
figuration as an ideal construction of the science of 
mechanics. 

Such an interpretation as I have briefly sketched 
above is given by Professor Karl Pearson in the new 
edition of his "Grammar of Science" (191 1). It is, 
however, urged by Mr. Bertrand Russell and other 
mathematicians "that, ultimately, the whole history 
of a system of material particles is describable in 
terms of their masses and spatial relations "... and 
" that in order to predict the future or reconstruct the 
past of any material system, all we need to know is 
the geometrical configuration of its particles in any 
two moments of time." * If this position is accepted, 

1 T. Percy Nunn, "Animism and the Doctrine of Energy," "Pro- 
ceedings Aristotelian Society," 1911-1912, Cp. his " Aims of Scientific 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 253 

"it is no longer possible to think of a particle as 
possessing a velocity or an acceleration." For any 
geometrical position within a mechanical context is 
purely static. The matter may be put in this way. 
If in a mechanical system we take an instantaneous 
flash-photograph or snap-shot, A, of the configuration 
at a given moment, and a second snap-shot, B, at a 
subsequent moment, then we can predict the exact 
configuration which will be given in snap-shot C at 
a later moment, if the constitution of the system 
remains unchanged. Each flash-photograph just 
gives the momentary positions of the particles, and 
their positions only. But that is all that we need for 
mathematical treatment. If it be asked what 
becomes of the motion on this view, the reply, I 
conceive, is that there may be movements in the 
changing world which is to be interpreted, and there 
may be movement of thought in the mind of the 
interpreter, as he thinks, through A and B to C, but 
within the ideal construction, as such, we deal only 
with the snap-shotted positions. 

It may perhaps be said : — If mechanics deals 
with ideal constructions, surely its thought-model, and 
its snap-shots, are merely products of the scientific 
imagination. Are you not by this method just 
putting into your ideal construction at the start, all 
that you get out of it at the finish ? If the premises 
be granted, no doubt the conclusions necessarily 
follow. But we want to know the laws of nature, not 

Method" (1907), § 45, p. 103. I have received, and wish to acknow- 
ledge, much help from Dr. Nunn in correspondence as well as through 
his writings. Mr. B. Russell's "Principles of Mathematics" should 
be consulted, especially i., chap. liv. 



254 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

only the laws of your ideal constructions. Quite so 1 
And therefore the test of the validity of an ideal 
construction is whether it can be applied in such a way 
as to enable us to interpret observable phenomena. 
Now observable phenomena have a way of being so 
terribly complex that in thousands of cases we do 
not know whether the necessary conclusions within a 
mechanical scheme, as such, are applicable to the 
observable routine of phenomena. We often know 
little or nothing about the particles or their positions. 
We cannot get any mechanical snap-shots. Take a 
particular case which bears upon our special inquiry. 
Whether an ideal construction of the strictly 
mechanical order is applicable within that exceed- 
ingly complex natural configuration of particles (if 
such it be) which we call the cortex of the human 
brain, we simply don't know. I conceive that, as 
things now are, anything like positive assertion or 
anything like positive denial is sheer unscientific 
dogmatism. Some day we may know : to-day we 
do not know. That is surely the true position of 
matters. Ought we not to leave it at that ? 

Reverting now to our ideal construction, let us 
call the interpretation of a system in which such 
a snap-shot determination as was described above 
is practicable, an A B C interpretation. Such an 
interpretation gives the ABC law in terms of 
mechanical relationships. There may be all sorts of 
other relationships very interesting and important 
in their proper context. But the mechanical 
relationships are all that mechanics wants and all 
that mechanics is concerned with. If the constitution 
of the system changes and with it the mechanical 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 255 

relationships, we shall have to determine the law of 
the change, let us say in term of a j3 y. We shall 
then have to combine an ABC determination 
with an a j3 y determination. 

We may next ask whether an A B C interpreta- 
tion, that is one in strictly mechanical terms of mass- 
particles and positions, is applicable in the case of 
some of the complex phenomena with which 
chemistry deals. I take it that, in any comprehensive 
sense, it is not yet generally applicable. What, then, 
is the scientific attitude ? To assert roundly that it 
is and must be applicable, though we do not yet 
know how to apply it ? Or to deny that it can be 
applicable because on other grounds we think it 
ought not to be applicable ? Or to say that we 
do not know? I have no hesitation in advocat- 
ing an honest confession of ignorance. And if 
this should be our attitude with regard to many 
chemical phenomena, still more should it be our 
attitude in presence of complex physiological 
changes. 

So far I have tried to keep strictly to the ABC 
question which I conceive to be the question for the 
science of mechanics as such. May I now be allowed 
to apply the term mechanistic to a system interpret- 
able in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry ? 
Of course this is putting a number of varied phenomena 
in one general group ; but we must do this to avoid 
detailed discussion here out of place. Let us grant 
that we have passed to a region of scientific inquiry 
where the strict ABC of mechanics, in terms of 
mass-particles and positions, cannot, as yet at any 
rate, be applied. In what way shall we express the 



256 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

method of procedure ? We find routine. How shall 
we deal with it ? Shall we say that for any scientific 
determination we require a treatment in terms of 
D E F analogous to (but only analogous to, not 
identical with) the strictly mechanical treatment? 
Here D E F stand for three static stages snap- 
shotted in the changing routine of, let us say, a 
chemical reaction. If stage D and stage E are 
known, then stage F can be predicted and the law of 
the constitution of the system for the purpose in hand 
may so far be ascertained. No doubt matters are 
often very much more complicated than this. The 
to and fro changes are very intricate. The poise of 
the system alters from moment to moment. But we 
want to get at certain basal principles of interpretation. 
I seek to indicate by the formula D E F that the 
determination is in terms of sequent stages of chemical 
or physical routine. 

Now pass to the field of physiology and organic 
routine. I take it that the term mechanistic (but 
sometimes mechanical ! ) is commonly applied to the 
hypothesis that the organic changes are interpretable 
without remainder in terms of D E F. They may 
have other relationships very interesting to the 
physiologist, but from the mechanistic standpoint 
these are merely epiphenomenal. Many biologists 
and physiologists, however, cannot regard this 
hypothesis as tenable. Let us grant that they are 
right in claiming that certain physiological changes 
cannot be interpreted in terms of D E F alone ; and 
let us apply the formula G H I to the law of the 
remainder — the strictly organic and physiological as 
such. Then we have the opportunity of correlating 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 257 

G H I changes with D E F changes without identify- 
ing the one with the other. 

As an example of what I mean by interpretation 
in terms of G H I, we may take the case of 
Tubularia as formulated by Dr. Driesch. If the head 
of this hydroid polyp be excised, a new head is 
restored by the combined work of many parts of the 
stem. Furthermore " if you cut out of a Tubularia 
stem pieces which are less than ten millimetres in 
length, you will find the absolute size of the head 
restored to be in close relation to the length of the 
stem piece" (i. 127). Here is a prediction which is 
fulfilled ; for we may trust Dr. Driesch implicitly in 
his facts. How then is this explained by him ? 
He tells us that what we can thus predict — the 
"prospective value" as he terms it (p. v.) — is a 
function of the size of the piece of stem (s), the 
direction of the cut (1) and the constitution of 
the Tubularia — its entelechy (E). And he gives the 
equation p. v. (X) = / (s, 1, E). So that given — 
what must always be given in any interpretable 
routine — the constitution of the system, and the 
conditions of the case, the changes which occur can 
be foretold, so long as the constitution E remains 
constant. One does not need, however, to seek 
abnormal cases to exemplify the method of treat- 
ment. Given the constitution of that complex 
organic system which we call a hen's egg t and given 
the conditions under which the process of develop- 
ment as embryogenic routine runs its course ; then 
we can apply our G H I principle and predict the 
state of matters say at the 96th hour. All this I 
conceive is fully in accordance with the recognized 
s 



258 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

methods of scientific procedure. It remains to be 
seen whether a physico-chemical interpretation of 
certain organic changes in terms of D E F can be 
correlated with (not necessarily identified with) a 
further interpretation of remainder phenomena in 
terms of G H I. 

We come now to psychological interpretation — to 
avoid ambiguity let us say an associationist interpreta- 
tion of the synthetic juxtaposition and compounding 
of the " eds " of experience including thought. 
Epiphenomenalists claim that psycho-physiological 
processes, or rather their "ed ''-products, are interpret- 
able in terms of G H I without remainder. They 
say that although an intelligent relationship to a 
pre-perceived end may seem to determine the direction 
of behaviour, yet, none the less, this does not really 
count ; if we knew enough about physiology that 
alone would suffice ; just as if we knew enough about 
physico-chemical mechanism that would suffice for 
organic interpretation ; and if we knew enough about 
mechanics that in turn would suffice for the complete 
understanding of every material change in the 
universe. All this, however, is somewhat speculative ; 
it does not appear to be at present within the sphere 
of the practical politics of contemporary science. Let 
us grant then that psychological products, and 
intelligent behaviour in relation to them, cannot be 
interpreted in terms of organic G H I without 
remainder. Let us call the law of the remainder 
X Y Z. This means that, in any routine of psycho- 
logical products, if the constitution of the mental 
system be known, stages X and Y and Z are sequent 
stages ; and that if you know X and Y you can 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 259 

foretell Z on the basis of routine. In the absence 
of routine, of course no scientific predictions are 
possible in any field of inquiry. Here XYZ are 
not identified with G H I in the sense that the 
psychological is merely a phosphorescent accompani- 
ment of brain-process. They can only be identified, 
within an ideal construction, in the sense that the same 
process may have both physiological ^^psychological 
relationships, just as an organic process may have 
both physico-chemical and physiological relationships. 
The business of science is to correlate these several 
relationships. Both parallelists and inter-actionists 
claim that there is a complete or partial correlation 
between what I have called the G H I and the 
XYZ. But the inter-actionists call in a psychic 
entity which, according to M. Bergson, dwells in time 
but not in space; so that, for them, the correlation 
is only at the locus of inter-action ; for M. Bergson it 
is along the line of the knife-edge where pure memory 
gets its wedge-like insertions into the spatial world of 
the inert. But I shall have somewhat more to say on 
this subject a few pages later. 

Now in accordance with the foregoing analysis we 
have : — 

1. Mechanical interpretation in terms of ABC. 

2. Mechanistic „ „ „ „ D E F. 

3. Organic „ „ „ „ G H I. 

4. Psychological „ „ „ „ XYZ. 

It may be that the chemical and physical 
phenomena dealt with in terms of D E F will here- 
after be resolved into complex configurations of mass- 
particles analytically interpretable in terms of A B C ; 
and it may be that the organic phenomena dealt 



260 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

with in terms of G H I will hereafter be shown to 
be complex D E F business. But we seem very far 
off at present from any such resolution of the presented 
phenomena. Let us, therefore, assume for the sake of 
argument, that both the D E F phenomena and the 
G H I phenomena are sui generis. Then I submit 
that the scientific course is just to accept the fact in 
each case and to seek to correlate phenomena which 
will not submit to identification. And my further 
contention is that if we attempt to explain the facts 
by saying that we must call in a D E F entity 
(Energy) as the Source of the D E F phenomena, 
and must call in a G H I Entity (Life or Entelechy) 
as the Source of the G H I phenomena ; then, for 
good or ill, we leave the plane of scientific interpreta- 
tion. And I should urge that if we do call in 
Entelechy in this sense as the Source of vital 
phenomena, then we ought, on precisely analogous 
grounds, to call in a crystalline entity (perhaps as a 
mode of Energy) as the Source of the phenomena of 
crystallization. 

Apart, however, from this point I seek through 
the above table to avoid an ambiguity in the use of 
terms which I find somewhat troublesome. The term 
mechanistic (and not infrequently the term mechanical) 
is sometimes applied no further down the above table 
than 2 ; but they are sometimes applied to 3 and 4 
also. Thus Mr. McDougall says, in a passage already 
quoted, that instinctive action is " incapable of being 
described in purely mechanical terms." And, as we 
have seen, Dr. Myers says : — " So far as intelligent 
behaviour can be regarded from the standpoint of 
observing the conduct of other organisms, it appears, 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 261 

however, imperfectly as instinctive — characterized 
by mechanism." Since such phrases are in current 
use, it is incumbent on a writer who attempts to deal 
with instinct and experience to make his own position 
clear. This I have endeavoured to do at the risk of 
seeming unduly crabbed and technical. 

It may, however, be said that these phrases, in 
such contexts, are not meant to be taken in the 
narrower sense to which I have attempted to restrict 
them. In what sense, then, are they to be accepted ? x 
What does a mechanistic interpretation, from this 
broader philosophical standpoint imply ? Does it 
not imply the universal, and perhaps eventually the 
quantitative correlation of all the happenings within 
the natural order, as such, without going beyond one 
natural order within which such correlations afford 
the data for an ideal " unity of concatenation " ? Now 
whether such universal correlation obtains throughout 
the universe of things and thoughts, we do not yet 
know. There may be some loose-jointed indeter- 
minism, just a very little of which William James 
demanded. We are still only beginners and novices 
in the interpretation of nature. We know just a 
little about correlation. Bit by bit we are extending 
this knowledge. But considering the bewildering 
variety and multiplicity of the events in the midst of 
which we live, bold indeed is he who ventures to 
affirm that universal correlation is more than an ideal 
construction the validity of which has still to be tried 

1 For M. Bergson and his interpreters everything which can be ex- 
plained in intellectual terms is mechanical or mechanistic. All that is 
not Life (apprehended through intuition and sympathy) belongs to the 
mechanical order of the inert. 



262 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

and tested. After all, the world may be in some 
measure chaotic. The cosmos may be evolving, not 
only from an earlier and towards a later cosmic phase, 
but out of partial chaos. Who can say ? 

We pass then to some further consideration of 
universal correlation, the meaning of this phrase 
being, I trust, sufficiently clear. Can we accept it as 
an ideal construction which may some day be 
applicable to the world of events we strive to 
interpret ? There is (need I again add the qualifying 
words, within the self-imposed limits of our dis- 
course ?) — There is one conditio sine qua non of its 
acceptance. And that is the acceptance as part and 
parcel of it — the full free and unhesitating acceptance, 
— of conscious relationships as belonging to the 
natural order, to be correlated with other relationships, 
and really counting in any situation within which 
they are developed. To say that the motions of my 
fingers as I write are the same that they would be if 
the conscious relationship were entirely absent, is 
little short of absurd. To urge that behaviour in any 
intelligent situation is just what it would be if 
intelligence were non-existent, seems to me a deliberate 
ignoring of what for any reasonable interpretation are 
the facts of the case. I have little remaining space 
at my command. I can spare none of it to discuss 
the epiphenomenal doctrine. The argument, I take 
it, runs thus :— Intelligence is correlated with cortical 
functioning ; but if the cortical functioning took place 
without the correlated intelligence, the behaviour 
would remain the same. (Here comes in unconscious 
cerebration and the like.) But have we any evidence 
that the very same cortical functioning which is 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 263 

developed when intelligence is present, ever does 
occur in exactly the same way in the absence of such 
correlated intelligence ? May we rub off the slate an 
observed or inferred correlation and unblushingly say 
that it doesn't really count? I must apologize, how- 
ever, to my epiphenomenal friends and to the shade 
of my master Huxley, for this cavalier dismissal of 
their views, and again plead in excuse the exigencies 
of space. 

We thus clear the ground and reach a plain issue ; 
either the conscious relationships are developed 
within one natural order and are co-ordinate with 
other relationships ; or there are two independent 
orders which inter-act ; that of matter, of which the 
body is part ; and that of life, of which mind is an 
attribute. 

It is sometimes asserted that inter-action of mind 
on body and body on mind is inconceivable. But, 
regarding the matter from the point of view of 
inferred correlation of bodily and mental processes, 
this argument pressed home results in universal 
inconceivability, and a complete paralysis of inter- 
pretation, if we are to be precluded from dealing 
with connexions unless we can explain the "why" 
of them. Science just accepts correlations as facts. 
We may, indeed, go somewhat beyond Hume's view 
that, in the world around us, this and that are merely 
" conjoined," being "connected" only in our experience 
through custom. We may firmly believe that they 
are really connected in nature since nature is a 
correlated context of which our conscious relation- 
ships are part. But why within the correlated context 
of the constitution of nature, this should be connected 



264 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

with that, science cannot say. We must just accept 
the facts as they are given. Why there should be 
mutual attraction between the earth and the moon, 
we do not know. And accredited manipulators of 
that triumph of ideal construction, the ether, assure 
us that it will not help us over our difficulty. 1 Why 
the motion of one billiard ball should be com- 
municated to another by impact — this, it is said, 
passes the wit of man to tell. Why anything should 
be correlated with anything else, in this sense of the 
word why, we do not know ; experience merely 
acquaints us with the facts of observation ; our 
scientific explanations only serve to correlate the less 
familiar with the more familiar types of correlation. 
All correlation is (if you will) a mystery ; granted 
two orders of being, there is no more mystery in the 
kind of correlation suggested by inter-actionists than 
in any other observed or inferred correlation. And 
if, on the one-order-of-nature hypothesis, conscious 
relationships are as a matter of fact found to obtain 
— Well, there they are, as modes of natural process 
to be correlated with other modes. 

Now Mr. McDougall arguing in favour of inter- 
action rightly urges 2 that it should not be rejected 
on the score of its being more inconceivable than 
other modes of correlation. But when he is criticiz- 
ing the assumed correlation of conscious-processes 
with cortical brain-processes he speaks with a 
different voice. "To assume," he says, "that of all 
physical processes just certain brain-processes are 
accompanied by conscious concomitants, would leave 

1 Cf. Karl Pearson, " The Grammar of Science," vol. i., pp. 301-2. 

2 " Body and Mind " (191 1), pp. 207-8, 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 265 

the relation too obviously mysterious ; the coming 
into being of the sensation, at the moment of the 
occurrence of a brain-process of a certain quality 
would be too decidedly miraculous " (p. 152). Why 
it should be more mysterious and miraculous than the 
correlation of certain events in an independent soul 
order with certain material processes of a second 
order I am unable to see. Mr. McDougall holds 1 
" that the instincts are differentiations of the will to 
live ... by means of which it pushes on along 
diverging paths, creating by their agency the various 
great families of the animal kingdom ; each animated 
by the great instincts common to all, the tendencies 
to seek food and to reproduce its kind ; each animated 
also by special instincts characteristic of the group ; 
each instinct creating for its own service the bodily 
organs and the nervous structures best suited to serve 
as the instruments by which it may secure the satis- 
faction of its conative impulse." I confess that this 
interpretation of instinct seems to me to involve 
quite as much of mystery and miracle, as the 
assumption that a natural correlation obtains 
between cortical functioning and conscious process. 
But might we not wisely drop — both one side and 
the other — all reference to mystery and miracle ? 

Opposed to the doctrine of inter-action — the inter- 
action, be it noted, of two orders of being, — is, in 
current controversy, that of psycho-physiological 
parallelism. Now the very term parallelism seems 
at the outset to imply two orders of process which 
run side by side and cannot intersect. And even 
the term concomitance, as commonly accepted, 

1 " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., p. 258. 



266 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

carries a like implication. What, then, is the thesis 
that the upholders of this doctrine are concerned 
to maintain ? We may summarize it briefly thus : that 
every psychical process has a parallel physiological 
process ; that for every differentiation of the former 
there is a parallel differentiation of the latter ; and, 
as a corollary, that when any two physiological 
processes are precisely alike in every respect, and 
in all their relationships, then, if the one has a given 
psychological concomitant, that of the other is 
identical. Obviously this is an ideal construction 
which far outruns what can be established on 
empirical data ; hence many psychologists regard 
it as a working hypothesis. And if this means that 
they abandon the concept of parallelism and accept 
only the concept of correlation, for what it is worth 
and as far as it goes, that is clearly a step in the 
right direction. 

If this is spoken of as an appeal to physiology 
to the end of furthering an explanation of the facts 
of psychology, let us make the appeal with our eyes 
fully open. What do we hope to get from the 
appeal ? An explanation of the conscious relation- 
ship between this and that? Well and good. But 
what do we mean by an explanation ? Do we 
expect to gain from physiology any further informa- 
tion as to the nature of the conscious relationship 
as such ? If so, our expectation is futile. Let us not 
delude ourselves with vain hopes, or, if it be preferred, 
worry over idle fears. The conscious relationship 
within a synthetic process comes into being under 
certain conditions. That is just a fact to be accepted. 
Physiology will neither make it or mar it. All we 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 267 

can do is to correlate this fact with other facts. 
That is where physiology comes in. It furnishes a 
body of other facts to be correlated with these 
psychological facts. Why they should be correlated 
in the context of nature we do not know. All that 
we can confidently affirm is that some correlations 
between psychological and physiological happenings 
seem as well established as any other correlations in 
the realm of nature. For the experiential relation- 
ship is, for us, just a natural event which we come 
to know just as we come to know other natural 
events. We eschew all the metaphysics of episte- 
mology. But if some mental states have cortical 
correlates, may not all ? We ask this as a question 
to be answered bit by bit through inquiry. We do 
not make any positive assertion. At most we may 
accept a provisionally affirmative reply, as part of a 
policy which spurs us on to further investigation. 
Even if, however, we grant that only in some cases 
is there a correlation between the mental and the 
psychological ; is it not in accordance with scientific 
method to pass on, with some measure of con- 
fidence, to the conclusion that, where such correla- 
tion does obtain, the same physiological happenings 
in the cortex, will always be correlated with the 
same states of consciousness and not with other 
states ? 

It is just here, however, that difference of opinion 
and divergence of interpretation come in. There is 
an alternative view. And, since I am desirous that 
it should not suffer from inadequate presentation, 
I will quote from an able paper written by a 
distinguished exponent of the philosophy of M, 



268 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

Bergson. " I suppose," says Mr. Wildon Carr, 1 
" every one agrees that as a fact every psychological 
state implies a physiological state. . . . But is it 
equally agreed that to the same cerebral state 
there corresponds the same psychical state, and 
conversely that to an identical psychical state there 
corresponds an identical cerebral state ? May not 
different, even totally different, psychical states be 
accompanied by the same nervous conditions ? 
There are some cases in which it seems to me," says 
Mr. Carr, "almost impossible to believe that it is 
not so. . . . It is not necessarily, nor even probably 
true that the same cerebral state determines the 
same psychical state, for there might correspond to 
the same cerebral state several very different 
psychical states. . . . Our body is the material 
instrument of the mind. . . . Why then does this 
mind seem to spring into being just where our 
afferent nerves end and our efferent nerves begin, 
that is to say, in the brain ? Because it is just there 
that the intellect becomes serviceable, just there that 
it enables the living creature to control and direct 
its activity, just there that the free choice with 
which it endows it becomes realizable. There is no 
parallelism, nor causality, there is solidarity. The 
body serves the mind and the mind directs the body. 
They are inseparable, to quote an illustration of 
Bergson's, as the knife is inseparable from its 
edge. The brain is the sharp edge by which con- 
sciousness penetrates the compact tissue of events, 
but it is no more co-extensive with consciousness 

1 "Proc. Aristotelian Soc." N.S. vol. xi. (1910-1911), pp. 134, 
135, 143. 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 269 

than the edge is co-extensive with the knife." 
Thus Mr. Carr. One must remember here that the 
knife belongs to a different order of being from the 
events into which its edge is inserted. 

I said above that parallelism implies two orders of 
being. Here is what Mr. Carr says in the connexion : 
. — " Parallelism," he writes, " is an attempt to express 
a relation between two things that belong to different 
orders, to different kinds of reality. The problem of 
parallelism comes to us from the two substances of 
Descartes, the two attributes of Spinoza. It comes 
to us permeated with the idealist-realist controversy 
of the eighteenth century. It is on this dualism 
that the hypothesis of parallelism rests. I do not 
mean," he adds, "that parallelism may not find its 
solution in some form of monism ; what I do mean 
is that it is based on a view of phenomena which 
divides them into two entirely separated orders of 
reality, or planes of reality, or meanings of reality, 
or kinds of reality — qualities and percepts, things 
and thoughts. Parallelism is not merely based on 
that view, it is essentially that view; it does not 
explain dualism, but is the expression of it" 
(pp. 139, 140). 

Now it has been my aim to contribute in some 
slight measure to the translation of the old 
philosophical antithesis of two orders of being, into 
other terms involving other concepts. Starting with 
na'fve perceptual experience, instead of positing the 
world on the one hand and mind on the other hand 
as independent terms within different orders of 
process, I accept the given experiential relationship 
as one among many relationships within one order 



270 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

of being to be interpreted in just the same scientific 
way; and the old antithesis takes for me the form 
of that between experiencing and the experienced. 
But at the lowest level at which we can begin to 
interpret, as best we may, the experiential relation- 
ship, it is already extraordinarily complex. Just think 
of the chain of correlations involved in seeing an 
" object." And think of the differentiations involved 
when instead of seeing the object we subsequently 
have an anticipatory image of it! It is difficult 
enough to conceive, even in schematic form, how 
all this comes about — that is to say to trace step 
by step all the complex correlations. But this 
difficulty is not in the smallest degree lessened 
when we assume that much of it takes place in a 
different order of being. The correlations have to 
be traced there just as much as here. All we can 
do in either case is just to accept process as given 
and endeavour to show how the stages are related. 
And here comes the stress on process. Whatever 
else it may be, experiencing is a process. However 
else we may interpret it, the successive phases of 
process are correlated. On any hypothesis, there 
is also a correlation between this process and other 
processes — whether this process belongs to the mind 
order and the other processes to the world order, 
or all are given within one natural order. Now on 
the two-order hypothesis psychical process in the 
mental sphere inter-acts with physiological process 
in the brain. On the one-order hypothesis there are 
not really two processes, but one process, a psycho- 
physiological process ; a process, with what M. 
Bergson would term the unity of interpenetration ; 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 271 

a process of which the physiologists may study the 
correlations within the organism, and of which the 
psychologists may study such correlations as are 
involved in M. Bergson's doctrine of pure perception. 
Physiological products and a physiological con-figura- 
tion or constellation are different from mental pro- 
ducts and a psychological disposition. But though 
the products are diverse there is but one emerging 
life-process, unitary and indivisible so long as the 
organism functions as a whole. The life-process, 
however, is an extraordinarily complex one, and 
the belief in its unitary character does not preclude 
the belief in interrelations between different phases 
within the whole. Indeed many of the arguments 
in favour of inter-action between two orders, the 
mental and the physiological, are, in my opinion, 
merely translations into the language of animism, 
of the unquestionable inter-action between cortical 
and sub-cortical functioning within the organic 
process. In a sense too much stress may perhaps 
be laid on the unitary process of living, that is, if 
it be regarded as the unity of a blank sheet of 
paper. But if it be regarded as the unity of a 
whole with correlated parts — the whole dominating 
the parts and the parts contributing to the whole ; 
if it is the kind of unity of which human design is 
a highly developed example, then the stress seems to 
be amply justified. 

In the emphasis on process, and especially in 
the emphasis on process as one and indivisible, no 
matter how much distinguishable differentiation may 
obtain, we come to some extent into line with Mr. 
Carr who, interpreting M. Bergson, says in a 



272 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

passage quoted above: — "There is no parallelism, 
nor causality, there is solidarity." But for him 
the solidarity is at the plane of intersection of two 
different orders of being. It is solidarity along the 
line of the knife-edge. 

On what kind of evidence, then, is the existence 
of an independent mind-order accepted ? It is 
confidently claimed that there are certain modes of 
mental process which cannot possibly be correlated 
with cortical process. Hence they must run their 
course in the mind independently of bodily 
happenings. Dr. Driesch takes the case of a man 
who notices that a lamp recently bought begins to 
smoke. He examines the mechanism, decides that 
this or that must be done to stop the nuisance, 
and stops it. The brain is affected in correlation 
with certain presented stimuli ; the brain is also 
instrumental in initiating the appropriate movements 
of thumb and finger. But the middle portion of 
the series has " nothing to do with the brain what- 
ever ... it is not of a cerebral character at all, 
though at both ends it is in connexion with cere- 
bral phenomena." The intervening mental events 
form an " intra-psychical series." This is 
the business, not of the brain but of the psychoid 
which uses the brain. The psychoid here invoked 
is entelechy raised to a higher power. It is the 
essential agent concerned in action ; and action is 
that which is determined by past experience. It is 
that which has a historical basis. 

But what is the evidence for an intra-psychical 
series, independent of any physiological series ? 
For this we may profitably turn to Mr. McDougall's 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 273 

recent book on " Body and Mind " — a work of great 
ability in which are skilfully marshalled the argu- 
ments for a doctrine of animism. It is not easy to 
grasp firmly the key to the whole position set forth 
in a portly volume — I believe, however, that this key 
bears the label " Meaning." 1 

We see an object from a dozen points of view, 
and yet we call it the same object. What, then, is 
the same ? Not the presentations, for they may be 
all different, but the meaning. And the appropriate 
response is determined not by this or that constel- 
lation of stimuli, but by the meaning they suggest to 
the mind. The same idea may be expressed in 
English, French or German. The assemblage of 
physical marks on paper, the images on the retina, 
the physiological impulses coursing along the optic 
nerve, the exact changes in the occipital lobe of the 
brain are different ; but the meaning for the mind is 
the same. We may see a sentence printed, or we 
may hear that sentence spoken. In the one case 
the visual centre in the occipital lobe is thrown into 
physiological activity ; in the other case the auditory 
centre in the temporal lobe. It matters not. The 
meaning for the mind is the same. A telegram from 
a friend is received, bearing the words : — " Your son is 
dead." How different the effect from that produced 
by the words : — " Our son is dead " ! And yet how 
slight the difference in visual stimulation ! How 
minute the difference of cortical change ! The pro- 

1 I should myself prefer to reserve the word meaning for secondary 
meaning in the perceptual sphere, and to apply the word significance 
to meaning which has conceptual relationships. But to do this here 
would only confuse the issue. 
T 



274 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

found difference lies in the meaning conveyed to the 
mind, not in the merely cerebral states. Of course 
the cerebral states give the'cue to the meaning ; but it 
is the meaning itself — meaning for the mind — which 
counts. Or, translating this into psychological terms, 
as Mr. McDougall puts it, "the sensory content, 
whether vivid and rich in detail, or dim and scanty, 
is but a subordinate part, a mere cue to the 
meaning " (p. 304). 

But the essential point for Mr. McDougall is that 
" there exists no unitary neural process correlated 
with meaning; that in fact meaning has no imme- 
diate neural correlate which can be regarded as its 
immediate cause, or its phenomenon, or of which 
it can be regarded as the psychical aspect " (p. 305). 
So, too, with conation. " The conditions of conation," 
he says, " are psychical, and in many cases these 
psychical conditions are such as have no immediate 
correlates among the brain processes " (p. 328). 
Mr. McDougall appears to be convinced that those 
who provisionally accept a correlation between mind- 
process and brain-process, are logically committed to 
an atomistic psychology — to the doctrine that 
consciousness is compounded of elements (p. 281), 
and that these elements are ultimately sensations 
(sensa). Admitting that correlated with these sensa- 
tions as such, there are cortical events, he claims that 
these are severally separate and distinct, and can 
only be united in experience by the relating activity 
of the soul. After discussing " the psycho-physics 
of meaning," he says :— " We have seen that even the 
sensory content of the consciousness of an object 
has for its physical correlate a [number of discrete 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 275 

processes in the brain, which in no sense constitute a 
unitary whole. How much less, then, are we justified 
in assuming that the unitary psychic whole of 
sensory-context-plus- meaning has any physical corre- 
late in the brain" (p. 311). In fine, "the brain- 
processes could produce no sensations except by 
acting upon a soul, and their effects are combined in 
one consciousness only in virtue of their acting upon 
one soul " (p. 299). Thus Mr. McDougall is confident 
that the unity of consciousness remains absolutely 
unintelligible unless we postulate " some ground 
other than the bodily organization " (p. 366). Such 
is the animistic thesis. 

Now Mr. McDougall distinguishes again and 
again between what I have spoken of as the "eds" 
and the " ing " of experience, though not in these 
terms. He speaks, for example, of " those who think 
of all consciousness and all psychical process, as 
consisting in what we call the sensory content of 
consciousness ; for the sensory content does seem like 
a patchwork." Here we have the juxtaposed and 
compounded " eds " of experience — those " eds " 
which Dr. Alexander regards as non-mental. " But," 
Mr. McDougall continues, " the sensory content and 
the sensations and images that compose it are 
abstractions only, achieved by fixing our attention 
on one aspect of mental process. Sensations are 
merely incidents in the process of cognition, and no 
amount of compounding of sensations will result 
in an act of cognition, a knowing of an object" 
(p. 170). Here we have the "ing" of experi- 
ence. Since, however, the " eds " or sensory con- 
tent have neural correlates, and since they are 



276 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

abstractions reached by neglecting the correlative 
" ing " one may surely urge that this correlative " ing " 
is also in like manner an abstraction reached by 
neglecting the correlative " eds." But it is this 
abstraction that Mr. McDougall hypostatizes as the 
psychic entity. Furthermore, since mental process is 
essentially a relating of the "eds " which have brain- 
correlates, on what valid grounds can Mr. McDougall 
deny that physiological process is essentially a 
relating of the brain-correlates? As I conceive 
physiological process, this is just its essential feature. 
It is the process through which organization is 
reached. And why should not the same process 
which relates and organizes the conscious experience, 
relate and organize also, within one order, the function- 
ing of the cortex ? 

It will perhaps be said that I am ignoring the 
whole of the argument from meaning. My attitude 
is rather that of one who accepts all the facts and rejects 
the conclusion. The facts are familiar to psychologists. 
There can be no doubt that a number of different 
but allied presentations may be psychologically 
connected with what we may term a common 
meaning-path. Any one of these may then be a 
condition of the flow of process along that path — 
any one of the different presentations of what we call 
the same object for example ; or the spoken word 
and the written word. But any two presentations 
may also be differentiated in connexion with different 
common paths — the words our and your for instance. 
Furthermore the one presentation, say our, may 
become allied with one complex set of meaning- 
paths, the other presentation, say your, with a quite 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 277 

different set. And so forth. It is all terribly 
complex. But the psychological complexity remains 
precisely the same for empirical treatment (and 
Mr. McDougall claims that his doctrine of animism 
is based entirely on empirical considerations,) whether 
there are neural correlates or not. We have not to 
deal with an argument from complexity. Mr. 
McDougall does not say that all this is too complex 
to have physiological correlates. He asserts that 
the nature of meaning is such that it cannot have a 
physiological correlate. 

This simplifies the issue. What is the essential 
characteristic of meaning which is adduced in 
justification of this assertion ? 

Now the word meaning, like so many other 
psychological terms, is used in both those contexts 
to which I have so often drawn attention — that of the 
" eds," and that of the " ing," of experience. Mean- 
ing may be something meant, or it may be — well 
just meanzV^. When we say that a nauseous 
caterpillar has acquired meaning for a bird that has 
seized its like, the meaning is what will be pre- 
perceiv^. In this sense of the word all meaning 
within a scheme of knowledge is something known — 
something meant. It is that which is in some way 
related within the scheme. Mr. McDougall does not 
use the word in this sense. He definitely excludes this 
reference in a footnote (p. 304), and tells us that he uses 
the word " to denote the consciousness of meaning, 
or the meaning part of the consciousness of an idea." 
Unless I wholly misunderstand him this is surely 
meaning as a distinguishing feature of mental process, 
as such ; it is meaning as relating one related item 



278 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

with another. It is the meaning that has reference 
not to the related terms, but to the relating process, 
as that which renders any relationship possible. But 
for Mr. McDougall the relating activity is the 
prerogative of the psychic entity — a prerogative all 
its own. Just as no juxtaposition of associated 
items presented to sense could possibly constitute 
experience, were there no psychical activity which, 
as associate, unites them in one synthesis ; so no 
collocation of words on a printed page could be other 
than presented blotches of printer's ink unless the 
relating activity of the psychic entity gave them 
meaning. 

But, stripped of what some of us regard as the 
non-scientific concept of the psychic entity, what does 
this Come to ? It reduces to this : — In the absence of 
synthetizing process there could be no such thing as 
a synthetic product. To this we can all, I suppose, 
subscribe. But why do some of us exclude the 
psychic entity from any place in what we regard as 
scientific interpretation ? Because it seems to us to 
be a concept having reference to the Source of the 
observed synthesis. Because it is put forward as the 
Agency whose business is that of relating. We 
again re-echo the words of Henry Sidgwick : — " Why " 
—for scientific interpretation — " Why do the relations 
want a Source ? Why cannot they get on without 
one ? " It is just because Mr. McDougall, as I think, 
comprises in one synthesis a doctrine of process and a 
doctrine of its Source, whereas I regard all reference 
to Source as outside the pale of scientific inquiry, that 
our conclusions are bound to be widely divergent. 

If, then, meaning, in my interpretation, is just 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 279 

part of process itself, why does it so persistently 
elude our most patient search for it among the 
juxtaposed or compounded products of mental 
process ? Because we seek it where it can never be 
found. Because we look for it among the " eds " of 
experience. Because, as relating and cognizing, it 
can never at the same time assume the guise of the 
related and cognized. As M. Bergson would say, it 
wholly eludes the photographic camera of the 
intellectualist. Only through intuition are we 
directly aware of the flow of process and of the inner 
nature of experiencing. That is why conation can 
never be objectified or "ed" ified. It is felt as 
mental tendency with directed meaning. Its end, as 
the object of desire which is meant, may be clearly 
and sharply conceived ; but as it streams onward 
towards that end it is just mental living — it is 
process glowing with brilliant awareness and enjoy- 
ment. Life eludes intellectual thought, save in 
symbolic concepts, as it eludes the scalpel of 
the anatomist and all physiological analysis. Mean- 
ing and conation are moulded on the very form 
of life ; on life in its highest development. But why 
should we deny that the process which is life has 
physiological relationships as well as psychological 
relationships all along the line ? After all, that great 
body of unitary physiological process which is the 
functional correlate of the structural complexity of 
the cortex, with its millions of neurones, must have 
soma significance within the ideal construction of the 
biologist. What precludes us from regarding its 
imperial business as that of relating the contributory 
sub-processes within its provincial centres ? 



280 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

The printed letters on this page give rise to 
discrete and separate stimulations of the retinal 
cones. The impulses are carried inwards by discrete 
and separate neuronic fibres. Somewhere in the brain, 
eventually, let us say, in the occipital lobe of the 
cortex, there occurs the process of relating these 
several items hitherto only partially related in lower 
centres. Is this relating in no sense a physiological 
process ? And where does this physiological process 
cease ? Suppose that instead of the discrete and sepa- 
rate retinal stimulations affecting the visual centre of 
the occipital lobe, there are allied visual and auditory 
stimulations affecting the relatively distant centres in 
the occipital and temporal lobes. Seeing the 
multiplicity of neuronic connexions throughout the 
cortex, why should we be told with so much 
confidence that physiological processes in the brain 
cannot possibly be the ground of the relating of 
these sub-processes within its empire ? May not the 
relating activity, so called, be just as reasonably 
assigned to the physiological process in the cortex 
and the organism as a whole as to the correlated 
psychological process, hypostatized as a psychic 
entity ? Is not a denial of brain-process as relating 
and integrating, just because we cannot at present 
tell in detail just how sub-process here is correlated 
with sub-process there, tantamount to a denial that 
any physiological interpretation of physiological facts 
can be given ? Of course this may be so. But why 
found so much upon our present physiological 
ignorance? Why not give physiology just a little 
longer to try its prentice hand at interpretation ? 

It seems to me that even now, though we may 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 281 

still be ignorant of many details, the evidence for 
physiological solidarity is not inconsiderable. At the 
one end of the scale of animal life, as Mr. McDougall 
himself indicates (p. 259), the admirable work of Dr. 
Jennings on the infusoria leads us to infer that the 
response of the organism to local stimulation is a 
" total reaction." And at the other end of the scale I 
venture to submit that the ^physiological inference 
from Mr. McDougall's own striking research on vision 
and retinal rivalry is that the cortex responds by total 
reaction . 

If a spot of white light be viewed by an observer 
having a red glass before his left eye and a blue glass 
before his right eye the spot may appear to be purple. 
But it may at one moment appear to be red and at 
another moment appear to be blue. Either colour 
may pre-dominate or prevail according to the attentive 
reinforcement or inhibition of the process related to 
the stimulation in the one retina or the other. So, 
too, the microscopist learns to use his two eyes 
separately : and can at will see either the object in 
the microscope field or the drawing on which his other 
eye is focussed. " It is difficult," says Mr. McDougall, 
" to reconcile the alternation of the two colours in 
consciousness with the view that the excitations of the 
two optic nerves become physically compounded in 
visual centres of the cerebrum ; and it is still more 
difficult to reconcile with this view the possibility of 
reinforcing, by voluntary effort, either process to the 
exclusion of the other " (p. 290). For Mr. McDougall 
voluntary attention is an activity of the psychic 
entity ; inhibition a secondary effect thereof. For us 
such attention is the psychological correlate of 



282 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

selective processes within the cortex. Both attention 
and inhibition imply physiological relationships within 
the context of the nervous system. But this is by 
the way. Our present concern is with " physical 
compounding" in a "common centre." 

When we look at any illuminated surface with 
both eyes, it appears no brighter than when it is seen 
with one eye only. This fact again, according to Mr. 
McDougall, is incompatible with the common view 
that the optic nerves transmit their excitations to be 
summed in a common centre. Other such facts based 
on his own very careful observations are adduced by 
Mr. McDougall in support of his conclusion that " the 
fusion of simultaneous sensory stimuli to a unitary 
resultant is not a physiological or physical fusion or 
composition, but a purely psychical fusion ... for it 
is clear that these psychical fusions of effects of 
sensory stimuli obey, or take place according to, 
purely psychical laws that have no physical counter- 
parts . . . the fusion is a psychical process to which 
no physical process runs parallel " (p. 293). 

Now we are here invited to make election between 
two alternatives ; either (1) purely physical com- 
pounding in terms of resultants in some hypothetical 
nerve-centre ; or (2) purely psychical integration in 
terms of a soul-entity whose integrating power is 
taken for granted to account for the facts. I am not 
prepared to accept the limitations of election laid 
down. I am not prepared to agree that if a process 
is not interpretable in terms of so-called mechanical 
summation, then we must interpret it in terms of a 
psychic entity. I have already made confession of my 
faith that if by vitalism is meant no more than that 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 283 

there are, in physiological phenomena, organic 
relationships and modes of synthesis which differ 
from those in a physico-chemical system, as such, 
then I am a vitalist. But I may be a vitalist in 
this sense, without subscribing to the doctrine of 
animism. 

Let us, however, scan a little more narrowly 
inorganic analogies, freely admitting that they are 
not very close. In the solar system regarded as a 
gravitative field, there are reciprocal relationships 
which are the ground of observed attractions. Where 
is the specific centre in which this ground has its seat ? 
Is it in the sun ? Then what about perturbations ? 
Does it not pervade the whole system ? Have we not 
to take into consideration the total configuration ? 
Or take physical phenomena which suggest closer, 
but still distant, analogies. Two coils in which 
electrical processes occur, reciprocally influence each 
other. Is it necessary that there should be a third 
instrumental centre in which the reciprocal influence 
shall be collected and compounded ? Does not the 
total field of reciprocal influence suffice ? 

These are admittedly distant analogies ; perhaps 
it will be said that they are far-fetched. I submit, 
however, that they suggest that we should not seek in 
the physiology of the nervous system for an indepen- 
dent centre of summation, but should lay stress upon 
total reaction — should emphasize the whole field of 
reciprocal influence within the entire cerebral context. 

Am I false to the scientific flag, if I urge that we 
are still novices in the interpretation of the integrative 
processes within the cortex, and if I claim that we 
ought not to found too much on our present 



284 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

ignorance ? No doubt the exact nature of the rein- 
forcing and inhibiting influence of one cortical sub- 
process on another or others requires further elucida- 
tion. Still some of the facts of inhibition of a purely 
physiological type, say in the spinal cord, are now 
familiar. A sample of them has been given in our 
third chapter. Now seeing that it is the normal 
business of the two eyes to function as one binocular 
organ, may not the physiological process of one 
retina be brought into physiological relation with that 
of the other retina, each normally inhibiting the 
redundant part of the other, so as to preclude the 
visual confusion which must arise if there were 
variable summation of brightness in the course of 
their joint action ? Much more investigation is 
needed. I am well aware that this is of the nature of 
a surmise. But can it be asserted that such 
reciprocal inhibition is physiologically impossible, or 
even that it is wholly unsupported by physiological 
analogies? It seems to me that this is the kind of 
thing that goes on throughout the whole business of 
the integrative action of the nervous system. And if 
some such reciprocal inhibition of cortical sub- 
processes due to the stimulation of the two retinas 
has been established through natural selection, I see 
no reason why emphatic blue in the one, supported 
by psycho-physiological meaning, should not partially 
or wholly inhibit the sub-processes normally due to 
the stimulation of the other retina. The whole 
matter is difficult to interpret. The question is 
whether any physiological interpretation, correlated 
with the psychological interpretation, on some such 
lines as these or better physiological lines is a sheer 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 285 

impossibility. For that is Mr. McDougall's contention. 
It is just because the cortex is one system with a 
unitary integrative process that the principle of total 
reaction seems to me to be of the highest physiological 
importance. The ground of physiological integration 
correlative with that of psychological integration 
is to be sought, I conceive, not in some hypothetical 
summation centre, but in cortical process as a whole. 
In no cortical centre does physiological change occur 
without in some measure affecting the total con- 
stellation of cerebral changes which in their entirety 
constitute cortical process. Until such a unitary 
interpretation is shown to be physiologically unsound 
in principle, I submit that it should be given further 
trial before we have recourse to a psychical entity 
independent of physiological correlates. 

But the trouble is that if one brings forward 
biological and physiological evidence of such total 
reaction ; if one adduces instances of sub-cortical 
inhibition ; if one urges in opposition to extreme 
vitalistic or animistic interpretation that embryological 
development proceeds towards an end which we can 
foresee ; if one lays stress on the fact that the same 
organic end is often reached by diverse means ; if one 
turns for illustration to biological evolution ; one is 
met by the assertion (and I regard it as nothing more 
than a bare assertion) that all this is evidence of the 
activity of a teleological psychic entity. One is told 
that "all the wonderful stability and complexity 
combined with gradual change throughout the ages 
... is in reality an attribute of an enduring psychic 
existence of which the lives of individual organisms 
are but successive manifestations" (p. 377). The 



286 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

same assemblage of facts which I regard as evidence 
of the instrinsic nature of the organism as a differen- 
tiated part of one natural order, is adduced by Mr. 
McDougall as evidence of the extrinsic inter-action of 
an animistic principle nowise " mechanistic " but 
essentially finalistic. So there the matter must rest. 
One can only say : Utrum horttm mavis accipe. 

We have come back into touch with the problems 
of mechanism and finalism ; for the activity of the 
psychic entity is essentially teleological. In three 
chapters of his work Mr. McDougall urges the 
inadequacy of mechanism for the interpretation of 
biological phenomena — in my judgment with complete 
success, since the term mechanism is restricted with- 
in the limits of physico-chemical processes. If the 
concept of mechanism be thus defined, then I can 
fully agree with Mr. McDougall and other vitalists 
that unquestionably a mechanistic interpretation of 
organic phenomena is inadequate. But it seems to 
me that there is a great leap from this sound basis 
to the conception of the soul as an independent 
psychical entity controlling phenomena — unless it 
be the leap from the natural ground of phenomena 
to their Source. In that case the whole problem 
has to be discussed on a different platform. Here I 
endeavour to keep on what I conceive to be the 
plane of scientific interpretation. And just as I hold 
that the scientific explanation of organic phenomena 
in terms of physics and chemistry, and in these 
terms only, is wholly inadequate ; so do I regard the 
explanation of these phenomena in terms of finalism 
as wholly speculative — especially as Mr. McDougall 
himself says that " we have to confess that we cannot 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 287 

form any conception of the way in which this 
teleological guidance of morphogenesis is affected " 
(p. 244) ; and Dr. Driesch tells us that " we are by no 
means able to understand " it " even in the slightest 
degree" (op. cit, ii. p. 143). If we could only 
consent to restrict the term finalism to the interpreta- 
tion of psychological phenomena in which there is 
inferential evidence that some pre-perception of end 
is present, then for scientific interpretation the 
question would be : — What is the nature and value of 
such evidence in the case of morphogenesis ? Here, 
of course, there is plenty of room for difference of 
opinion. But the issue would be clear and nowise 
ambiguous. As things are at present, an alternative 
seems to be presented in this form : there must be 
either mechanism or finalism ; in organic phenomena 
physical and chemical mechanism is insufficient for 
interpretation ; therefore these phenomena must be 
finalistic. But may there not be a great array of 
natural phenomena which are neither mechanistic, in 
the physico-chemical sense, nor finalistic in the sense 
of involving conscious pre-perception ? 

That, however, does not satisfy Mr. McDougall. 
He extends downward the teleological conception 
and teaches that " not only conscious thinking, but 
also morphogenesis, heredity and evolution are 
psycho-physical processes. All alike are conditioned 
and governed by psychical dispositions that have 
been built up in the experience of the race " (p. 379). 
Here the conscious relationship (however we interpret 
it) is co-extensive with life. As we have already 
seen, M. Bergson, on the one hand, and Professor 
Titchener, on the other hand, have given expression 



288 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

to similar opinions. Paulsen and his school go 
further. In their doctrine, all modes of natural 
process involve relationships which, if not conscious, 
are at any rate of the conscious order. If this be so, 
"then we may assume that just as a system of 
impulses with corresponding feelings runs parallel 
with the vital processes in animal bodies, a similar 
but less highly developed inner life corresponds to 
plant life ; and furthermore that something akin to 
this appears in the spontaneous movement of inorganic 
bodies, in chemical and crystalline processes, in 
processes of attraction and repulsion." * 

One may here ask whether the suggested 
consciousness — or, at any rate, that which is of the 
conscious order — comprises anything analogous to 
pre-perception. I urged at the beginning of the 
fourth chapter, that the scientific evidence for 
consciousness is closely connected with the evidence 
for pre-perception, and that, where we may reasonably 
infer the guidance of behaviour by pre-perception, 
we may fairly assume conscious perception as its 
natural precursor. What evidence is there of pre- 
perception in chemical and crystalline processes, in 
processes of attraction and repulsion? It may be 
said that inorganic processes lead up to ends which 
we can in some measure foresee, and that the Source 
of these processes must therefore have some 
teleological pre-perception of the end to which 
nature is passing on in the course of evolution. That, 
however, I submit, is not the scientific question. 
The scientific question is whether in, let us say, the 

1 Paulsen, "Introduction to Philosophy," English translation by 
Frank Thilly (1907), p. 120. 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 289 

crystalline process itself, there is a pre-perception of 
what is just coming based on !some prior perception 
of what on a previous occasion has come. I do not 
think that we have any such evidence as science 
must demand, that this is the case. But this is by 
the way. Let us follow the course of the argument. 

Paulsen leads up to his panpsychic doctrine 
through psychological considerations. I may perhaps 
be allowed to bring the question into line with my 
own method of treatment and to put the matter 
briefly thus : — If experience be a process, wherein lies 
the essential feature of the process ? In experiencing, 
or in the experienced ? In a sense we may reply : In 
both, since all that is experienced involves the correla- 
tive actual or possible experiencing. Now, psychol- 
ogists tend to become members of one or other of two 
great schools. The adherents of the one school 
emphasize the " eds " of experience and are associa- 
tionists and intellectualists ; those of the other school 
emphasize the " ing " of experience and are, as the 
phrase goes, voluntaristic. They lay stress on im- 
pulse, and will, and conative tendency; they lay 
stress on the consciousness of process in progress. 
And this experiencing is, and is felt as, a unitary 
process in contradistinction to the manifold of " eds," 
relatively discrete, juxtaposed, or compounded. I 
hold that the voluntaristic school emphasize a fact of 
the utmost importance — the fact that we intuitively 
enjoy experiencing as such ; that we are directly 
aware of the process and flow of the mental life. 
Paulsen was a voluntarist. And he made this the 
basis of his panpsychism. He urges that those who 
lay stress only on what is presented, or conceived or 
u 



290 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

otherwise knowledged (if I may be allowed the word) 
" will always find it impossible to conceive plants as 
psychical beings, or to consider the movements 
of inorganic beings to be the signs of psychical 
processes." What does this imply ? It implies that 
all " processing " is of the same order, and always and 
everywhere of the conscious order — whether it be 
gravitating, or crystallizing, or organizing, or ex- 
periencing as we human folk experience. It involves 
the assumption that the constitutive ground of the 
natural order is throughout of such a character as to 
involve conscious, or quasi-conscious relationships. 

Well, it may be so ! Who can tell ? Most of us 
have been tempted to indulge in such speculations. 1 
But if we come to regard such a doctrine as somewhat 
too speculative within the bounds of a philosophy 
founded on science ; if we cannot fully subscribe to 
panpsychism ; if we feel that it is safer at present to 
assume that only some natural processes involve such 
conscious relationships as those of which we are our- 
selves aware ; nay, more, if we go further and regard, 
provisionally, profiting by experience as the best 
criterion we have of consciousness as an effective 
relationship, and believe that, in the higher vertebrates, 
this is correlated with physiological relationships in 
the cortex of the brain ; may we not incorporate at 
any rate this result of such considerations as Paulsen 
voiced : — that just as experiencing is a unitary 
process, so is living a wider unitary process, and so 
too is the whole of nature a yet more basal unitary 
process ? If we speak of the conscious relationship 
as a property of certain organisms under certain 

1 Cf., my " Animal Life and Intelligence " (1890), p. 467. 



FINALISM AND MECHANISM 291 

conditions, we must always remember that it is a 
consciousness not only of the related, but also of the 
process of relating. And if, as I have urged, instinctive 
experience implies the existence of a synthetic group 
of experienced items ; it involves also the correla- 
tive synthetic process of experiencing ; if it involves 
a primary form of conscious relationship to a given 
situation as experienced, it involves also a primary 
intuition (in M. Bergson's sense of the word) of the 
process of relating ; and if in my interpretation it is 
based on organic foundations, those foundations are 
grounded in the constitution of the organism as a 
visible expression of that unitary process which we 
name living, as living itself is only a differentiation of 
that vast unitary process of which the contemplated 
order of nature is the product. 

Further than this in a book the aim of which, 
however inadequately attained, is to deal with 
scientific problems in a scientific spirit, I am not 
prepared to go. Of the Source of phenomena it is 
not my province to treat. Science deals with process 
and its products as somehow existent. I have, 
throughout spoken of existent process as the ground 
of observed and observable phenomena. But of only 
one form or mode of process have we any direct 
conscious awareness — the process which we enjoy as 
we live. What, then, is the Source of process ? That 
is a question for metaphysics, not for science. Can 
we identify ground and Source ? Can we say that, 
in the enjoyment of process which is our conscious 
life, we are in merging unity with the Source of the 
universe? This metaphysical route leads up to the 
doctrine of immanence. Or shall we say that process 






292 INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 

as given, implies a Source as Giver? This route 
leads up to the doctrine of transcendence. But 
once more I urge that the man of science should 
leave these questions to be discussed by meta- 
physicians. Once more I urge that the more 
clearly we distinguish the scientific problems from 
the metaphysical problems the better it will be 
both for science and for metaphysics. 



INDEX 



A priori character, common to 
experiencing and the experi- 
enced, 190 

Admiration, a binary emotional 
compound, 124 

Esthetic appreciation, a form of 
enjoyment, 201 

Alexander, Dr. S., his use of the 
word enjoyment, 123, 188 ; and 
contemplation, 134, 188, 201 ; 
his contention that all sensa and 
cognita are non-mental, 135 

Allied reflexes, 68 

Alternating reflexes, 68 

Ammophila, instincts of, con- 
sidered, 223, 226, 230 

"Animal Behaviour," references 
to, 5, 23, 33 

Animism, Mr. W. McDougall's 
advocacy of, III, 275 ff. 

Annulling of consciousness, M. 
Bergson's doctrine of, 207 

Antagonistic reflexes, 68 

Arthropods, instinctive knowledge 
characteristic of, 216 

Associating process and associated 
products, 52 

Bergson, M. Henri 
on swimming and walking, 17 

the unitary nature of experi- 
encing, 52 

the intellectual instincts, 98 

interpenetration as con- 
trasted with juxtaposition, 
124, 199 

order of inert and order of 
vital, 159, 182, 210, 233 



Bergson, M. Henri 
on the new and unique in ex- 
perience, 172 
organic routine as due to the 

Agency of Life, 172 
spontaneity of Life, 1 76 
science and metaphysics, 1 78 
his criticism of Darwin, 179 
insistence on importance of 

process and change, 180 
argument that all process is 
vital, 181 
on selective processes, 191 
his doctrine of pure memory, 
196, 209, 212 
pure perception referred to, 
197 
on the insertion of Life, 198 
objects and processes of 

experience, 200 
the capital error of associa- 
tionism, 200 
his doctrine of instinct, 205 ff. 
on consciousness as annulled, 
207 
the brain as a switchboard, 

210 
the brain as a reservoir of 

indeterminism, 211 
kinds of unconsciousness, 

211 
Life and Spirit as Reality, 

212 

his position with regard to the 
relation of pure memory 
to heredity, 213 

on relation of organization to 
instinct, 214 



293 



294 



INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 



Bergson, M. Henri 
on the choice presented to Life, 
216 
the divergence in arthropods 

and vertebrates, 216 
the inherent inability of the 
intellect to comprehend 
life, 220 
some distinctions between 
instinct and intelligence, 
220 
the relation of seeking to 

finding, 222 
the instinct of ammophila, 

223, 226, 230 
science and philosophy, 225 
instinct as sympathy, 226 
intuition, 227 
the kernel of his doctrine of 

instinct, 230 
his hypostatization of results of 
analysis, 234 
view of the relation of the 
intellect to mechanical 
interpretation, 261 
Berkeley, Bishop, his use of word 

" notion," 203 {footnote) 
Bradley, Mr. F. H., on sentient 

experience, 126 
Brain as switchboard, M. Berg- 
son's doctrine of, 210 

Calkins, Miss M. W., on idealist 
position, 128 

Cat, decerebrate, 77 

Carr, Mr, Wildon, referred to, 
219; on intuition, 227; on 
psycho-physiological parallel- 
ism, 268, 272 

Cause, use of term avoided as far 
as possible, 140 

Chemistry and mechanics, 255 

Cinematographical snap-shots, 
129, 181, 225, 229, 234 

Clifford, W. K., on organism as 
historic being, 160 

Common path, physiological 
principle of, 64 

Common meaning path, 276 

Conation, equivalent to mental 
process, 136 



Conative aspect of instinct, 41, 43, 

S3 

Concatenation, unity of, 145, 261 
Conceptual maps or thought- 
models, 146 
Conditions of world process as 

a whole : there are none, 

141 
Conditioning and conditioned, 

same process as, according to 

point of view, 141 
Congenital dispositions of the 

cortex, 104 
Conscious relationship, a link in 

a correlated chain, 92 
Conscious relationships of the 

natural order really count, 

262 
Consciousness, criterion of, 90 ; 

as annulled, 207 
Constellation of reflexes, 69, 73 ; 

of cerebral changes, 285 
Constitution and disposition, 117 
Contemplation and enjoyment, 

188, 201 
Context and meaning, 194 
Correlation, use of term, 140 j 

universal, 261 
Cortex and consciousness, 93 
Creative departure from routine, 

171, 176, 246 
Crystal, formation of; conditions 

and ground, 143 ; prediction of 

nature of before first formed, 

149 

Darwin, Charles, criticised by 

M. Bergson, 179 
Decerebrate animal, 74 

frog, 74 

pigeon, 75 

dog, 76 

cat, 77 

Descartes, his use of the word 

eminenter^ 138 
Disposition and constitution, 117 
Divergent paths to insects and to 

man, M. Bergson's doctrine of, 

218 
Diving and swimming, 6 
Dog, scratching reflex of, 60 



INDEX 



295 



Dog, extensor thrust of, 64 

, decerebrate, 76 

—■ — , Dr. Pagano's, experiments 

on, 78 
, Dr. Pawlow's observations 

on association in, 84 
Driesch, Dr. Hans 

brief definition of instinct, 22 

doctrine of entelechy, 154 ff., 
244 j as applied to Tubularia, 

257 

on intra-psychical series, 272 
on our conception of teleological 
guidance, 287 



Emotional aspect of instinct, 13, 
112 

Empathic tendency, 237 

End, same, reached by different 
means, 247 

Enjoyment as equivalent to ex- 
periencing, 123, 134, 199 ; con- 
trasted with contemplation, 188, 
201 

Entelechy, doctrine of, 154; as 
ground, 156, 244 ; as Source, 
157, 244, in Tubularia, 257 

Epiphenomenal doctrine, 262 

Epistemology, part of the meta- 
physics of Source, 165 

Evolution contains non-routine 
factors, 167 

Existence of world for experience 
postulated, 127 

Expectation and memory, 195 

Experiencing and the experienced, 
51 ; in the discussion of 
emotion, 123; as a double 
reference, 126, 132; polarized 
in privileged centres, 134, 192 ; 
ambiguity to be avoided, 198 ; 
distinction as drawn by M. 
Bergson, 200 ; can we contem- 
plate experiencing ? 201 ; in- 
stinctive experience involves 
both, 231 ; with differing em- 
phasis, 232 ; in relation to 
meaning, 279; in relation to 
panpsychism, 289 

Eye of vertebrate and pecten, 179 



Faculty interpretation of in- 
stinct, danger of falling into, 118 
Fatigue, physiological, 70 
Finalism, discussion of, 242 
Finding and seeking in M. Berg- 
son's doctrine of instinct and 
intelligence, 222 
Flight of swallow, 54 
Foster, Sir Michael 
on decerebrate frog, 74 
decerebrate pigeon, 75 
difference between automatic 
and voluntary act, 83 
Frog, decerebrate, 74 

Goltz, Dr. F. 

on decerebrate dog, 76 
Green, T. H. 
on Source of phenomena, 137 
impossibility of a natural 
history of self-conscious- 
ness, 164 
Groos, Dr. Karl 
on the value of play, 25 

the genesis of the instinctive 
play response, 87 
Ground, use of term, 142 

" Habit and Instinct," references 

to, 4. 23, 55 
Hamilton, Sir Wm. 

on instinctive belief, judgment, 
and cognition, 97 
Hereditary dispositions of cortex, 

87 
Hereditary transmission, 174 
History, and science, 165 ; does it 

repeat itself? 166, 244 
Hume, David, modified quotation 

from, 138 j on custom as the 

ground of routine, 166 
Huxley, T. H., on human instincts 

in the intellectual sphere, 102 

Ideal construction of mechanics, 

253 
Idealist and realist, 127 
Impetus of Life, 177 
Impulse, nature of, 1 18 
Impulsive, force of instinct, 1 16, 

120 



296 



INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 



Individual and individuality, 172 

Innate mental tendencies, 87 ; 
distinguished from instincts, 
103 ; their range in animal 
life, 121 

Innate capacity and instinct, 96, 
103 

Instinct and instinctive, defini- 
tions, 5 ; Dr. Driesch's, 22 ; 
Dr. Myers', 22, 28, 238 ; Dr. 
Stout's, 25 ; Mr. McDougalPs, 
24, 30 j Dr. Wundt's, 31; 
Father Wasmann's 3 1 ; Sydney 
Smith's, 204 ; M. Bergson's, 
205 fl. 

Integration in nervous system, 83, 
284 

Intelligence, involved in first per- 
formance of instinctive act, 34 ; 
definition of, 50 j as process 
and product, 51 ; as distin- 
guished from instinct by M. 
Bergson, 220; and by Dr. 
Myers, 238 

Interaction of mind and body, 
263 

Internuncial path, 65 

Intuition, as described by M, 
Bergson, 182, 227 

James, Wm., on nemo dat quod 
non habet) 138; on problem of 
the one and the many, 144 ; on 
the discontinuity theory, 144; 
does consciousness exist ? 190 

James-Lange, theory of emotion 
alluded to, 113 

Jennings, Dr., observations on 
infusoria, 91 ; on total reaction, 
281 

Kirchoff, his definition of me- 
chanics, 251 

Knowledge, instinct as a kind of, 
204, 215 

Lankester, Sir Ray, on instinct 

and educability, 94 
Life cannot be comprehended by 

the intellect according to M. 

Bergson, 220 



Life history and routine, 169, 244 
Living matter, origin of, 160 
Lindsay, Mr. A. D., quotations 
from his work on " The Philo- 
sophy of Bergson," 228, 229. 
Longitudinal section in experi- 
ence, 189, 193 ; relationships, 
195 



McDougall, Mr. W. 
criticises, Dr. Driesch's defini- 
tion of instinct, 24 
on the use of the term instinct, 
. 30,47 
instincts as perceptual 

systems, 38 
definition of intelligence, 50 
innately organized instinc- 
tive inlets, 85 
innate re-presentation, e.g. 
in nest-building, 106 
his doctrine of instinct and 
emotion considered, 108 ff. 
on intelligence of solitary wasps, 

219 
his use of term mechanical, 261 
on the interaction of mind and 
body, 264 
the doctrine of concomitance, 
264, 265 
his discussion of meaning, 273 ff. 
no neural process correlated 
with meaning, 274 ; or with 
conation, 274 
his animistic interpretation, 275 
on retinal rivalry, 281 

physical compounding in a 

common centre, 282 
our conception of teleological 
guidance, 287 
Man, principal instincts of, in Mr. 

McDougall's treatment, 1 1 1 
Meaning, primary and secondary, 
8, 9 j primary, 193 j secondary, 
194; and context, 194; Mr. 
McDougall's discussion of, 
273 ff. 
Mechanical ideal construction, 

251 ff. 
Mechanism and physiology, 256 



INDEX 



297 



Mechanistic interpretation, 250 ; 
place of in scientific scheme, 

259 

Memory, 195 ; pure, M. Bergson's 

doctrine of, 196, 209, 212 ; not 

a function of the brain, 211 

Modifications and variations, 175 

Monistic unity of concatenation, 

145 
Moorhen, diving, 4, 193 ; swim- 
ming, 15 J primary experience 
of, 19 
Myers, Dr. C. S. 
on the beginning of experience, 

16, 18, 130 
criticises, Dr. Driesch's brief 

definition of instinct, 22 
on relation of instinct to intelli- 
gence, 28, 238 ff. 
instinct and reflex action, 56 
finalism and mechanism, 240, 
241, 260 

Natural history of experience, 
impossible according to T. H. 
Green, 163 

Natural order as contextual net- 
work of interrelated processes, 
186 

Noci-ceptive nerves and nocuous 
stimuli, 72 

Non-mental, use of term by Dr. 
Alexander, 135, 139 

Notion, Bishop Berkeley's use of 
term, 203 {footnote) 

Nunn, Dr. T. Percy, on the tend- 
ency to hypostatize energy, 183 
(footnote) ; on mechanical inter- 
pretation, 252 ; help received 
from acknowledged, 253 

Object as meaningful, proleptic 
use of the word in speaking of 
instinct, 42 

Order of nature as one, 133, 188, 
263, 269, 291 

Orders of inert and vital wholly 
separate for M. Bergson, 159, 
182, 210, 233 

Organization, relation of, to in- 
stinct, 214 



PAGANO, Dr., experiments on 
newly-born puppies, 78, 109 

Panpsychism, doctrine of, 288 ff. 

Pallial eye of pecten, 179 

Parallelism , psycho-physiological, 
265 

Paths, private, internuncial and 
common, 65 

Paulsen, doctrine of panpsychism, 
288 ff. 

Pawlow, Dr., experiments on 
association in dog, 84 

Pearson, Professor Karl, on 
routine as grounded in percep- 
tive faculty, 166 ; interpretation 
of mechanics, 252 

Peckham, Dr. and Mrs., defini- 
tion of instinct, 88 

Perceptual country and concep- 
tual maps, 146 

Philosophy, relation of, to science 
according to M. Bergson, 225 

Physiological interpretation of re- 
flex action and behaviour, 57 

Physiology and mechanism, 256 

Physiology and psychology, 266 

Pigeon, decerebrate, 75 

Postures, reflex, 71 

Prediction, limits of, 149 

Pre-perception, 37, 55 ; Mr. 
McDougalPs interpretation of, 
38; Dr. Stout's treatment of, 
39; in daily life, 44; and 
cortical spread, 48 ; has domi- 
nant utility in early stages of 
experience, 195 5 some form of 
necessary for finalistic con- 
duct, 249; and panpsychism, 
288 

Prepotency of noxious stimuli, 67, 
72 

Present, specious, 195 

Primary instincts of man, 1 1 1 

Private path, 65 

Process and product, relations of, 

143 

Process, as synthetic, 129; the 
nature of psycho-physiological, 
270, 276 

Products as frozen bits of world- 
process, 143 



298 



INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE 



Prospective reference, psychology 

of, 43 . 
Prospective value, 257 
Protoplasm, could properties of, 

have been predicted prior to its 

evolution? 151 
Psychic entity, 278, 280, 281, 285 
Pugnacity, 118 
Pure perception, M. Bergson's 

doctrine of, referred to, 190, 

197 

Realist and idealist, 127 

Reality as Source, 183 

Reflex action and instinct, 54, 74 

Reflex arc, 57 

Refractory state of diminished 
excitability, 68 

Reid, Dr. Archdall, on the volun- 
tary nature of instinct, 47 j on 
acquired characters, 94, 96 

Reid, Thomas, on instinctive be- 
lief, 97 

Relationship, conscious, nature of, 
184 ; terms of, 185 

Remembering and the remem- 
bered, 196 

Repetitive routine, criterion of, 
169 

Reverence, different ways of treat- 
ing such an emotion, 122, 124 

Revival, factors of, 194 

Romanes, G. J., on lapse of con- 
sciousness in automatism, 210 

Routine as basis of science, 166 ; 
as basis of finalism in interpre- 
tation of the organic, 243 

Russell, Mr. Bertrand, on mathe- 
matical treatment of mechanics, 
252 

Scale of potency in reflexes, 72 
Schrader, Dr. Max 

on decerebrate frog, 75 
decerebrate pigeon, 75 
Self-assertion and subjection, 115 
Serviceable aspect of instinctive 

behaviour, 22 
Sherrington, Dr. C. S., on the 

integrative action of the nervous 

system, 57 ff. 



Sidgwick, Henry, criticises 
Green's doctrine of Source, 137, 
278 

Smith, Adam, on instinctive 
belief, 97 

Smith, Sydney, on instinct as a 
kind of knowledge, 204 

Seeking and finding in M. Berg- 
son's doctrine of intelligence 
and instinct, 222 

Source, metaphysics of, to be ex- 
cluded from science, 3, 136, 138, 
140, 157, 178, 180, 183, 186, 
278, 291 

Specious present, 195 

Spinal animal, Dr. C. S. Sher- 
rington's researches on, 61 ff. 

Spinal irradiation and induction, 

69 

Spontaneous reflex, 70 
Spontaneity of Life, 176 
Stout, Dr. G. F. 
on primary and secondary 
meaning, 8, 9 
definition of instinct, 25 
criticises the author's views, 

34-53 
on the anticipation involved in 
instinct, 39, 106 
the conative aspect of in- 
stinct, 41 
his term quasi-conative, 105 
Subject, the word used in logical 

sense, 131 
Swimming and diving, 6 
Sympathy, M. Bergson's use of 

the term, 224 ff. 
Synthetic process as only regroup- 
ing, 168 

Teleological factor, in, 249 
Terms of conscious relationship, 

185 
Thomson, Professor J. Arthur, is 

there one science of nature? 158; 

on organisms as historic beings, 

160 
Thomson, Sir J. J., on scientific 

policies and creeds, 136 
Thorndike, Dr., on definition of 

instinct, 99 



INDEX 



299 



Time-relationships, 189 (footnote) 
Titchener, Dr. E. B., on first 
movements of first organisms as 
conscious, 89; on definition of 
instinct, 100 
Total reaction, 281, 283, 285 
Transmission, hereditary, 177 
Transverse section of experience, 

188 
Transverse relationships, 190 
, sequence of, as in- 
stinctive experience, 193 
Tyndall, John, Belfast address, 

Unconsciousness, kinds of, in 
M. Bergson's doctrine, 211 

Unforeseeable variations, attitude 
towards, 176 

Unity of experiencing, 124 

Universal finalism, 250 

Universals, problem of, 146 



Variations, prediction of, 175, 

245 

, unforeseeable, 176, 246 

Vertebrate intelligence contrasted 

with arthropod instinct, 216 
Vital chemistry, 153 
Vital force, 152 
Vitalism, 152, 244, 283 
Vitalistic tendency in thought, 3 
Voluntaristic school of psychology, 

289 



Ward, Dr. James 
on experience as owned by 
some one, 126 
Wasmann, Father 
on the definition of instinctive 
behaviour, 31 
"Wundt, Dr. Wilhelm 
on the definition of instinctive 
behaviour, 31 



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